Naming places after famous people

29 July 2011 Last updated at 10:55 GMT By Clare Spencer BBC News This week the city fathers of Aberdeen, Washington, decided it might not be wise to name a bridge after Kurt Cobain. So what are the perils and pitfalls of renaming things after famous people?

There are some very famous places named after famous people. A famous renaming can quickly erase what went before.

How many foreigners flying into New York's JFK airport remember it used to be Idlewild airport?

We name places after people to recognise their achievements. Alexander the Great liked to found cities and name them after himself, in honour of his own achievements. But mostly it's done by other people.

Every act of naming is pregnant with meaning. In the 1980s, the UK had a wave of renaming places after Nelson Mandela. With then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly regarding Mandela as a terrorist, such namings were often by more left-wing councils and groups. The trend was immortalised in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses for the block of flats the Trotters lived in.

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It is about remembering the specific person but it is also about making sure there is a greater democracy in how cities look”

End Quote Derek Alderman Geographer Today, of course, Mandela is an uncontroversial figure, hailed from all parts of the political spectrum.

A similar flurry of renaming streets after Martin Luther King has happened in the US.

But many figures are inherently more controversial.

It's easy to see why Aberdeen decided to hold off on honouring Kurt Cobain. A great musician to some may be seen by others as a drug user who falls short of role model status. Instead the bridge will now stay as Young Street Bridge. But it's still named after a person - Alexander Young who built the first saw mill.

Attitudes to people can change over time. It used to be common to name streets after notables of the British Empire. In 2002, efforts were made to change the name of a street housing a large Sikh temple in Southall, west London. Havelock Road was named after Sir Henry Havelock, who was prominent during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

Some have even suggested that Liverpool's Penny Lane, made famous by the Beatles, is insensitive. It commemorates James Penny, an 18th Century slave trader.

Kurt Cobain is a controversial figure to some

The point is that attitudes change over time, says Derek Alderman, professor of geography at East Carolina University. He has been tracking the US streets named after Martin Luther King. So far he's counted over 900.

For Alderman, addresses are an everyday reminder of people's history in a way a museum can't be. "Think about all the times you use a street name in a day from catching a cab to putting it in your GPS."

In this way it can do much more than a monument and, he suggests, it is a cheaper option.

And older names are useful because they "force people to talk about their history".

People's reputations are constantly being reassessed, adds Alderman. He notes George Washington, once celebrated as presiding over the creation of the US constitution, is now also criticised by some for his association with slaves. He observes a trend in avoiding naming schools in the US after people in order to stay away from controversy.

But the debate, for Alderman, gives an opportunity to work out what the popular view of a person is. "If a city decides they are going to name a park after [Kurt] Cobain they will talk about why that person is important. In doing so they are going to talk about that person's legacy and so they have to come to a consensus about the meaning of that person."

Martin Luther King, on the other hand, has his own national holiday

Location names for Alderman can have political motivations. "Renaming a street is about claiming a certain voice, and a certain power over how your city looks. It is about remembering the specific person but it is also about making sure there is a greater democracy in how cities look."

Liam Scott-Smith at think tank New Local Government Network goes one step further. He thinks naming a place after someone can "reward good behaviour". This recognition, he thinks, could create a virtuous circle where people aim to get this kind of recognition.

Scott-Smith's think tank started a campaign in 2008 for more British roads to be renamed after modern people. Their report at the time claimed Britain is far behind America and France in doing this. But he says it should be encouraged for local celebrities to be named as "you have a strong affinity with someone in the area and that builds civic pride".

He does warn against fads, though, confessing that at the time the report was launched they suggested naming roads after David Beckham.

Remember Downing?

Figures can rise and fall in the public consciousness. Leeds University's student union once had a section called the Harvey Milk Bar, but many of the 18-year-olds arriving there for the first time would have been unaware of the life of the assassinated, gay 1970s San Francisco politician. After Sean Penn's recent high-profile movie, knowledge of Milk's life will have again spread.

Others maintain a steady level of fame. The officials who named streets in Italy, the Netherlands and Spain after George Orwell seem on safe ground.

Others can disappear into obscurity. How many people stopped in London's Whitehall, would be able to tell you much about the life of George Downing, after whom Downing Street is named?

Etymologist Tania Styles says that the people cities, towns and villages are named after have been forgotten over time without much consequence. That's because, she says, place names become a labelling function and the name "may as well be arbitrary".

Historians have struggled to find the Padda after whom Paddington is named, or indeed the Bucca who gave us Buckingham.

But she warns that nowadays the associations of the names will persist much longer. "In this day and age I can't imagine that kind of information will be forgotten."

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Eight people rescued from cliffs

16 July 2011 Last updated at 21:53 GMT

Three adults and five children had to be rescued by helicopter after scaling cliffs in Somerset to escape the incoming tide.

The group were at Brean Down, near Burnham-On-Sea, when they were forced to climb up by the rising water.

A rescue helicopter from RAF Chivenor in Devon was sent to the scene with two RNLI lifeboats and the Burnham-On-Sea coastguard rescue team.

The alarm was raised at 1915 BST on Saturday and they were found at 1945.

The helicopter winched all eight on board taking them to a nearby field where they were met by the coastguard rescue team.

It is understood that nobody required hospital treatment.

Swansea Coastguard watch manager David Hughes said anyone going out for a walk along the coast should "always prepare by checking the tide times".

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Why do people play music in public through a phone?

14 June 2011 Last updated at 10:46 GMT By Alex Hudson BBC News For many, teenagers playing tinny music to each other on public transport on their mobile phones can be intensely irritating. Why do they do it?

With mobile phones in many a teenager's pocket, the rise of sodcasting - best described as playing music through a phone in public - has created a noisy problem for a lot of commuters.

"All you can hear is 'dush, dush, dush, dush'. It's irritating. So many times I end up with a headache," says Tracey King, who has signed up to the Shhh! Scheme set up by bus company Arriva Yorkshire to stop the noise on their services.

"As teenagers, they don't seem to have the capability to think about others. I have heard older women turning round and saying 'will you turn that down?' and sometimes they will… and other times I've heard them with abuse and swearing at other people."

As mayor of London, Ken Livingstone called for the "absolute prohibition on playing music from a mobile system" as far back as in 2006. Young people can now have their zip cards - which allow them free travel in the capital - revoked for "anti-social behaviour", which includes playing loud music.

The issue has even been discussed in the House of Lords. In 2006, the Piped Music and Showing of Television Programmes Bill was presented to Parliament, calling for "the wearing of headphones by persons listening to music in the public areas of hospitals and on public transport" to be made compulsory, although it never made it into law.

Continue reading the main story Sodcasting is described by The Urban Dictionary as "The act of playing music through the speaker on a mobile phone, usually on public transport. Commonly practised by young people wearing polyester, branded sportswear with dubious musical taste."The term is believed to have been first used by Pascale Wyse in the Guardian in his series Wyse Words, a list of words that do not exist but should. He stated that sodcasters were terrified of not being noticed, so they sprayed their audio wee around the place like tomcats.So why do people do it? Is it just an act of youthful rebellion?

"I don't think it is intrinsically anti-social, what I would say is that it is a fascinating human phenomenon of marking social territory," says Dr Harry Witchel, author of You Are What You Hear.

"With young people, usually loud music corresponds very strongly to owning the space.

"They are creating a social environment which is suitable for them and their social peers. But for those not in this group - a 50-year-old woman for example - instead of confidence, she'll feel weakness and maybe even impotence as there's nothing that she can do about it."

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With young people, usually loud music corresponds very strongly to owning the space”

End Quote Dr Harry Witchel Author, You Are What You Hear But hasn't this always been the case? Most people who remember the 80s can remember someone with a boom box perched on one shoulder, pumping out the latest songs to anyone within earshot. Some take this tradition back even further.

"I reckon I was an early sodcaster," says the poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan.

"It was way back in the distant 1970s. As a teenager I was a big fan of the kind of music that made my mother say 'Will you turn that rubbish off?', and my dad hiss 'I wouldn't mind if it had a proper tune.'

"The fact is that I wasn't allowed to listen to [my favourite artists] in the house so I had to listen to them outside using a tape player."

But Dr Witchel says something slightly different was happening back then.

"When people went around with their ghetto blasters, you could argue that it was for the pure pleasure of the music they loved," he says.

"There is no excuse for why you would want to listen to tinny music, except if you were establishing territory. It just sounds rubbish. It must sound rubbish to them."

'Elderly people'

A group of schoolchildren on the 277 bus in Hackney, East London, don't all think that what they are doing is wrong.

"I wouldn't agree [that it was anti-social]," says one.

"The people who think it's anti-social don't really listen to this type of music."

A second agrees that the bus would be dull without a little bit of music.

"Fair enough, it might be anti-social but the bus is always quiet," she says. "You need something to listen to, right? We give you [something] to listen to."

Some youth workers argue that what the youngsters are doing is largely innocent.

"I don't think they [the sodcasters] are being selfish at all," says Dmitry Fedotov, of the Youth Association.

"I think if young people see sound as preferable to no sound then, if anything, they're going to be thinking they're doing people a favour."

And something is changing within the music industry itself. With the increase of songs being played through phones, more attention is being spent on the parts of the music that can be heard loudest though phone speakers.

"I think we're starting to see evidence that musicians and producers are thinking about the technology by which their music is listened to," says music journalist Dan Hancox, who has written extensively on the subject of sodcasting.

Rapper Giggs is said to be the most sodcasted artist, though quantifying this is very difficult

"It's something that has been described as treble culture.

"It is the idea that in this particular technological era, things that are transmittable on low fidelity (low quality) speakers are being heard more and more in pop music, quite a bit of R&B and hip hop - things which traditionally had a large and important bass element to them."

So, if this phenomenon is here to stay, what can be done by those who want a little bit of peace and quiet on their journey?

"Legislation is not the answer, and nor is citizen power, as anyone who has ever approached a sodcaster to ask them to stop will know all too well," wrote Julian Treasure, chairman of the Sound Agency, on his blog.

"I believe the heart of the solution is in teaching listening skills in schools. If we teach our children how to listen properly to the world - and especially to each other - they will understand the consequences of their own sound and be far more responsible in making it."

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