Incorrect street name signs a problem in the Bay

The report on incorrect street name signs finally makes public a problem that has beset Nelson Mandela Bay for years (“‘I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes to our spelling woes!’”, The Herald, March 19).

It has become clear that the officials in charge of the painting and erection of street names neither know nor care enough to ensure that the names are spelt correctly, or that the additional part of the name (road, street, avenue, lane, place) is correctly applied.

Often the name of one “street” is the same as that of another “road”, while branches of one or the other could be named “lane”, “place”.

The street running past Westering Primary School and ending at Westering High is Papenkuils Street.

However the high school is built over what was originally laid out as a further extension of Papenkuils, and the tail end which was cut off is now called Baobab Street.

A crescent around Baobab is still named Papenkuils Place.

Not far away is an inlet in Bougainvillea Drive named Bougainvillea Place. Punctuation matters, too. Where Fourie Street splits, one branch is called Joan’s Way, yet I have seen it too often as Joans Way, as if it was a misspelling of the name Jones.

And then there is the matter of spelling.

The street linking the two schools is Papenkuils, not Papenkuil.

Boshoff Street is spelt with two Fs because it was named after a relative of the developer of that particular area.

Only one member of that family, JN Boshof who was the second president of the Oranje Vrij Staat, spelt the surname with only one F.

The town of Boshof was named after him.

Lastly, your reporter made reference to Redwing “Road” — it is Redwing DRIVE. Bear in mind, too, that when the ANC precipitately changed the name of two Port Elizabeth streets (when it was still PE) it called them Govan Mbeki Avenue — clearly unaware that an avenue is a street lined with trees, which are few and far between on this particular route.