When Main Street is Minor

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. The main street in San Francisco is not Main Street. The main street there is actually called Market Street, and it goes on for several miles. Now, San Francisco does have a main street, but it’s just five blocks long, and it’s harder to find. Now, you might wonder why that is. Well, it turns out that San Francisco’s little bitty main street is named for a 19th century businessman whose name happened to be Charles Main.

How about that?

That makes a lot of sense.

Wait, so it’s not because it’s the primary street. It’s just named after this guy.

Who was this guy?

Charles Main made his fortune supplying miners during the gold rush, and the city honored him with a street named after him. Just happened to be called Main Street.

That’s always the way to make the fortune. Sell the tools. Don’t do the digging.

Exactly.

And that’s just one story that shows that names don’t always mean what you think they mean. And I’ll give you another example. I always thought that Snowflake, Arizona was probably named because the locals were transplants from the north or maybe they were wistful about cooler weather. But no, Snowflake, Arizona was founded in 1878 by a couple of guys named Erastus Snow and William Jordan Flake.

How about that?

And I should add that William Jordan Flake, one of the founders, is the great-great-grandfather of somebody you might have heard of, former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake.

Oh, there we go.

That’s pretty interesting. Snowflake, Arizona.

Well, names are just one of the things we talk about on this show, and we’d love to talk with you about any aspect of language whatsoever. So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.