Street name sign

A street name sign is a type of traffic sign used to identify named roads, generally those that do not qualify as expressways or highways. Street name signs are most often found posted at intersections, and are usually in perpendicularly oriented pairs identifying each of the crossing streets.

Modern street name signs are mounted on either utility poles or smaller purpose-made sign poles posted on a streetcorner, or hung over intersections from overhead supports like wires or pylons. Up until around 1900 in America, however, street name signs were often mounted on the corners of buildings, or even chiseled into the masonry, and many of those signs still exist in older neighborhoods. They are commonly used in France and England.

A street name sign may optionally indicate the range of house numbers found nearby. Some street name signs also indicate an alternative name for the street, such as "Fashion Avenue" for Seventh Avenue in New York City, or "Avenue of the Arts" for Huntington Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. Multilingual signs are common and may be required by law in some areas, such as French-speaking regions of Canada.

Most streets have a traffic sign at each intersection to indicate the name of the road. The design and style of the sign is usually common to the district in which it appears. The sign has the street name and sometimes other information, such as the block number or the name of the London borough in which the street is located. Such signs are often the target of simple vandalism, and signs on unusually or famously named streets are especially liable to street sign theft.

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