In Early December, not too long ago in a land not too far away – Duiven, Gelderland in the East of the country which some of you might know for its big Swedish furniture store – was able to claim they had the longest street name in the country: Laan van de landinrichtingscommissie Duiven-Westervoort (roughly, ‘The Duiven-Westervoort land use committee lane’).

However, the 2.6 meter-long sign disappeared or was removed two weeks after it was unveiled. It is unclear why the sign is gone: theft, repairs, who knows. And nobody knows if the city of Duiven is planning to make a new one. My money is on ‘stolen’ simply because the sign is so unique. The street had technically been around since 2010, but only recently got its own sign. Easy come, easy go.

Talking about signs always reminds me that an entire Dutch neighbourhood has street names based on Lord of the Rings.

(Link and sign: nos.nl)

The city of Zaandam, North Holland has a street that is getting a name change, from Piccolo to Hobo (Oboe), both of which are musical instruments. The Zaandam neighbourhood in question already has a street called Hobo and is now going to extend it. It also has streets called Cello, and then gets into musical-related terms such as Aubade, Prelude and Mazurka, to name a few.

The people who live on Piccolo street don’t want their street to become Hobo street. In Dutch, Hobo rhymes with ‘homo’, which is used as a derogatory word for homosexual, an issue brought up back in 2016 when the area was created. And I know what some of you are thinking, ‘Hobo’ doesn’t sounds great for anybody whose first language is North American English, as that refers to a vagrant, but that’s besides the point.

There are other Hobo streets throughout the country and apparently, that’s not a problem. I’d like to think that going from Piccolo to Oboe musically is a bit of an upgrade, because – and I held back on this – in that tooty-fluity neighbourhood, there’s also a street called Fagot, the Dutch name for a bassoon, which nobody seems to complain about.

In the Netherlands, you can always live on Fart Street, but then you could also live in on a street named after Lord of The Rings characters.

(Link: noordhollandsdagblad.nl)

The village of Geldrop in Noord-Brabant apparently has a neighbourhood with streets named after characters from the works of JRR Tolkien. The neighbourhood has been around since 2008 back when 24oranges was just getting started because had we known we would have been all over this one like Orcs.

For anyone who likes a long read, there’s this Master’s thesis on Street names in Noord-Brabant and Holland, which mentions the LOTR streets using an exclamation point.

On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve told you about Fart Street in Capelle aan den IJssel near Rotterdam and a few more odd ones.

(Link: www.huffingtonpost.com)