A Lorong is not a Street: Taxonomy of the Singapore Road Name

Given the plethora of online resources and services, do you still use the paper street directory?

While people are flocking to Google Map and SLA Map, there is a reason why I still hug my street directory book and even bought the latest edition recently.

There are things that you just cannot find on the paperless version. The road index is an example. Gone are the days you have to scan the index for your road, the online version like SLA Map provides a search box for that purpose.

The street directory from a certain publisher contains a real gem - their road index is in dual language. This, I thought, is a good chance to brush up my Chinese. Yeah right! Actually I'm lying. My English is the one to be brushed up, as far as the taxonomy of road name is concerned. You can't fault me for this - I had English and Chinese as first language in school and now with really talented Mainlanders working under with me, my working language is by and large Mandarin.

Disclaimer: My Chinese is by no means fantastic. What follows is a hodgepodge of guesswork.

If you do a classification on the road index, you'd realize there are more than two dozens ways we name the Singapore road. The list is shocking, you never thought Boat Quay and Boat Quay Lane are different roads in the index.

Taxonomy of the Singapore road name. Here are 22 most common and more interesting ones. The full list could be double the number.

There is no one-to-one translation between the English and Chinese road name. Is this any surprising? There is a sociopolitical reason behind this and I shall not elaborate. There is also the linguistic reason English "borrows" heavily from its cousins across the Channel.

Take Boulevard for instance. The word is suspiciously French and I never bothered to check the meaning from the dictionary. It sounds cool with the usual French airs. Of course it is only cool if you enunciate the French way, the same with 'reservoir' and 'rendezvous'. My ignorance disappeared after seeing the Chinese translation - 林荫道. Chey, so it is just a road lined with and shaded by trees. In fact the dictionary definition is:

a broad avenue in a city, usually having areas at the sides or center for trees, grass, or flowers.

And the translation for Avenue happens to be 道. Now I know why Orchard Road looks so different from Orchard Boulevard.

The mixing and matching leads to better understanding. A Way is a Big Avenue, so Boon Lay Way is wider than Boon Lay Avenue. A Track is a Rural Avenue. An Alley is a Small Lane. A Grande is supposed to be a Majestic Avenue, but looking at Tampines Grande I'm not so sure. A Path is a smaller version of a Walk. And of course, a Lorong is not a Street.

The Chinese translation reveals other information. I didn't know Buona Vista means "good view" in Italian until I blogged about it here. If only I read the road index more carefully a few years before, as Vista and View are pretty synonymous in the road index. I didn't know also that Vale is a kind of valley. You can call the Chinese an uncreative bunch for naming every valley a valley. That's why the Grand Canyon is called 大峡谷, just as the Dragon Girl in the Jinyong (金庸) story fell into 绝情谷.