It’s All in a Name (Street Names, that is)

I love the street names in France. The French don’t settle for innocuous, banal names like maple drive or pleasant view road. No, the French street names are suffused with history and culture. They recognize historical events, great scientists, and influential politicians, writers and artists.

While naturally there is a preponderance of French celebrities in these street names, the more nationalistic among you will be happy to learn that the Americans get their due here as well. One of the popular hangouts in the center of Toulouse is Place Wilson, named after our own Woodrow Wilson. Nearby you can find the Allée President Roosevelt and the Rue de John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

There is also an Avenue des États-Unis (that’s United States for those of you who neglected to take French in high school). Bus #10 always catches my attention because it has a big sign indicating that it goes to États-Unis. I take comfort in knowing that if I get homesick I can always catch Bus 10.

In any case, I have decided to learn about France through its street names and thought I might share with you some of what I’ve learned. I will start with the Allée Jean Jaurés. I cross this boulevard every day on my way to and from school. It is a big one, so, assuming that there is a correlation between importance and street width, I imagine that Jean Jaurés was a particularly important fellow.

If nothing else, Jean Jaurés is apparently a popular chap among those who name streets in France. In fact, if the number of streets named after a person is a measure of importance, then this guy is big time. I learned that there is even a line in the French movie Maitresse where a person looking at a map of Paris complains that "There are too many avenues named after Jean Jaures."

So who was Monsieur Jaurés? According to Wikipedia, Jean Jaurés (1859-1914) was a French Socialist and eloquent statesman. He was killed just before World War I by a French nationalist who wanted France to go to war with Germany. Jaurés took a pacifistic position during the pre-war period and advocated the use of diplomacy to address the growing tensions between France and Germany. He also tried to organize strikes in both France and Germany in order to force the governments to retreat from their aggressive positions.

Apparently Jaurés’ anti-war position was unpopular among the French who saw a war with Germany as an opportunity to revenge France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). The French lost the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans as a result of this war, and they saw another war with Germany as a way to get them back. Jean Jaurés, while obviously not popular among the pre-WWI hawks, seems to have redeemed himself among those who name the streets.

One of the more interesting things I learned about Jean Jaurés was that he supported Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French military officer who was wrongly convicted of espionage. The Dreyfus affair, in addition to revealing French anti-semitism, was a factor in the increasingly negative views of the Catholic Church in France. (Unlike Jaurés, the Church took an anti-Dreyfus position.) In 1905, France passed a law separating church and state.

In the same year, Dreyfus was officially exonerated. Interestingly, as late as 1985 the Minister of Defense refused to display a statue of Dreyfus that was commissioned by President Francois Mitterand. In fact, it wasn’t until 1995 that the army officially recognized Dreyfus’s innocence.

The French don’t only recognize great figures in history, they have also found an ingenious way to help the many among us who cannot remember important dates in history. For example, to get to our apartment by car, you must take rue de 8 mai 1945, which acknowledges the Allies’ victory in Europe. Less obvious is the short rue de 2 mai 1944 that is in Toulouse. This one took me a long time to research. There are not any obvious major events like V-E Day that took place on May 2, 1944. (I’m assuming, perhaps wrongly, that the fact that the Boston Red Sox lost to the Washington Senators on May 2, 1944 may not be so notable in France as to merit a street name.) Even the History Place site on World War II events had nothing listed for May 2, 1944.

I got so desperate to find out what happened on May 2, 1944 that I resorted to searching in French. It was on the French web site, Vers la Victoire (Towards Victory), that I think I found the answer. On May 2, 1944 the managers at two steelworks in Ancizes (a city halfway between Paris and Toulouse) cooperated with the French Resistance and closed the steel factories. Also notable on May 2, 1944 was an agreement reached between Spain and the Allies that Spain would restrict exports of wolframite to Germany. Wolframite, a source of tungsten, was strategically important during WWII because it provided the metal for tank armor.

I look forward to learning more French history through the street names. I am particularly curious about rue du FourBastard. (No, that’s not a translation or a typo, it’s the actual name. If you don’t believe me, you can find it yourself on GoogleEarth.) Given that in Toulouse there are 26 streets named after people with the first name of Charles, 38 Andres and 41 Pierres, it’s going to take me a while.