What's in a Road Name?

I have questions. Here are some answers.

Road names are facets of local history. How they’re pronounced is often a local thing, too. Growing up, with my parents from Piqua and Sidney, I was used to city names being pronounced differently than how you or I would grow up reading them.

The E.W. Scripps school at Ohio U has a whole pronunciation guide!

Here are some I recall that might make you wonder. But hey, they’re great for spotting outsiders!

Russia (ROO she)

Versailles (ver SALES)

Having gone to school in Saint Louis, I am well aware of how they butcher their French.

I’ll admit, it took a few times to understand the pronunciation of Clough. Whereas Wolfangel? Obviously named after a dude, and it was: Gottfried Wolfangel.

Kellogg Ave., I wondered: was it named for the big corporation that made Keebler products in Mariemont and is seemingly reducing its footprint in Cincinnati to zero? (They make Club and Townhouse crackers now.)

Nope: "It was named in honor of Edwin Kellogg (1862-1937) a long-time city council member who championed improvements for the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati."

The Mile roads are ones I thought I had down: miles from the city center? Not exactly, not in a city full of such windy roads:

"And those are all named as the distance along the Ohio River from the mouth of the Little Miami River," he says. "So it's basically the distance of the outfall of those creeks from the Little Miami and the roads were built parallel to those creeks and they adopted those names for the roads."

Beck says the naming appears to have started after the Revolutionary War, when the land was part of the Virginia Military District. The creeks are still there today.

What about Tide Cleaners? Is that legit or just a local chain licensing P&G’s branding?

It is legitimate! The Columbus Dispatch reports:

The Tide Dry Cleaners concept was developed in a two-year test of stores in the Kansas City area in which Tide maker Procter & Gamble found that consumers were dissatisfied with other dry cleaners’ inconsistent quality, inconvenient hours and unknown or high prices, officials at the company said.

One thing in particular sets the Tide cleaners apart from others, however. It’s that familiar Tide smell, a far cry from the chemical odor commonly associated with dry-cleaning shops.

“In fact, that’s part of our monthly audit,” said Terry Pickens, director of business operations. “They ask, ‘Can you smell the Tide smell?’??”

Which, a company that makes arguably the top detergent brand, handling a bunch of real-life stains might seem like a sleight departure from the mass-production business, but I bet it is good for market research. It’s definitely good for branding.

I don’t mind the chemical smell of the dry cleaners and not sure I care whether or not it smells like Tide, but there you have it.

I had Cincinnati questions, and now you have answers.