Until recently, French towns with fewer than 2,000 residents – the majority in the country – didn't have to name their streets. A new law is changing that. While it will help with deliveries and services, some worry that standardising addresses might erase centuries of rural identity.
In many parts of France, you can still send a letter with just the person's name, village name and nearest big city – no street name or house number needed.
The post office usually knows where everyone lives, but this system has confused other delivery services, which are busier now that more people shop online.
Emergency services also want to be able to more precisely identify where people live, which is the intent behind the 3DS law passed in February 2022, requiring all homes and buildings in France to have a number on a named street.
This affects a lot of places. In 2024, 84 percent of France's nearly 35,000 towns had fewer than 2,000 residents.
The post office estimated that before the law, a million buildings did not have an official address.
Listen to a village deciding on its street names on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 116:
Geographer Frederic Giraut recognises the common sense behind the reform, but also says it wipes out a lot of local knowledge.
In rural France, a village or group of buildings is called a lieu dit, which means more than just a hamlet.
“Lieu dit means the locality: the name of a farm, or a group of farms, a hamlet or other set of buildings,” Giraut explains. “They are geographic indications, related to places – to very local communities.”
Switching to street names puts these places into a network. While that might make them easier to find on GPS, something is lost, especially for people in remote, rural areas who feel more connected to the land than city dwellers.
There is a “loss of cultural attachment, cultural and heritage elements, especially related to place names”, Giraut says.
The lieu dit might live on as a street name, but its meaning will weaken as other streets get names too.
Evolving tradition
Naming streets isn't new in France. Cities have been doing it since the Middle Ages.
At first, names were descriptive, like Grande Rue (Big Street), or Rue des Lavandières (Washerwomen Street). Later, they became tributes to saints, religious figures or royalty.
“The Revolution introduced the idea of promoting a kind of pantheon related to the central power,” explains Giraut.
This led to streets named after politicians or cultural figures, which not everyone liked. Some worried that naming streets from above would "erase a very interesting layer of vernacular or popular culture", Giraut added.
Today, most French cities have a street or avenue named after Charles De Gaulle, the founder of the current republic, or Jean Jaures, a 19th century socialist leader.
Legacy of landscape
While the new law comes from the top, local towns are in charge of putting it into action. They often ask villages what they think.
Some places have pushed back, especially in regions with strong local traditions like Brittany or the Basque country. One Breton group has even asked Unesco to pause the law.
Giraut, who serves as Unesco chair in inclusive typonomy, says that opposition should not be seen as just reactionary politics. There are real questions about the impact of names, which are not neutral.
“If you choose mainly religious names, or ones in dialect or names related to the former historical ownership, or related to the environment and the historical knowledge related to the environment, you will produce a very different landscape of street signs and personal addresses,” he says.
As cities come into line with the new legislation, a whole string of new names will come into play.
Giraut says it’s easy to be dismissive of street names, but they do matter.
“It’s serious because it deals with the landscape of everyday life,” he says. “Place names are so present in daily life that it seems normal, with nothing at stake. But because its use is quite permanent, it is very important.”
Listen to more on this story on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 116.
