‘Street name affects your Scottishness’

Residentsofunion-themed placeslesslikelytoidentifyasScots

The name of the street you live on indicates how Scottish you feel, a study has found.

People living in Scottish areas with street names commemorating Britain, such as “Queen”, “Royal”, “Regent”, or “London” are less likely to define themselves as Scottish.

The finding is part of new research carried out by the University of St Andrews.

The study compared the street names of Scottish Westminster parliamentary constituencies with a recent population census asking people to identify their national identity.

In areas with a lower number of such unionthemed street names, people were more likely to describe themselves as

“Richsourceof informationto createcultural indicators”

having a “Scottish identity only”.

Dr Oto-Peralías, a researcher from the university, said: “Street names are cultural markers of a town and its history, and can be used as a rich source of information to create socio- cultural indicators at the regional and local level.

“With the help of data software with text analysis capabilities, it is feasible to analyse hundreds of thousands of street names to extract themes and trends capturing the culture and history of the population.”

The study also shows that religion remains a salient topic with the word “church” featuring in the top four of most frequent British street names.

People in areas with a high percentage of religiousstreet names, such as “church”, were more likely to identify as being Christian.