Saturday, October 23, 2010

New street signs (and names!) in Neve Oranim

Within the last few weeks, street signs have finally been put up in our neighborhood, Neve Oranim. Before this, there really was no way to tell what the names of the streets were, and, in fact, I think they really didn't even HAVE names! So, yesterday I went around taking pictures of the signs, and here they are (only one for each street):







Next, I went to Google Maps and downloaded a satellite/map image of the neighborhood. To this image, I added the names of the streets in red letters inside a red box. I'm sorry that it's a little hard to read. Our house, which is too new to be visible in the satellite picture, is just inside the loop north west of the intersection of Yahalom St. and Leshem St.
By the way, they picked a nice system for the street names. The name of the connector road, רחוב דרך אבני החושן Rekhov Derekh Avnei HaKhoshen ("Way of the Breastplate Stones Street"), is the clue. All of the other streets are named after precious stones that were in the breastplate of the high priest, as detailed in the Torah.

אודם Odem, as you might guess from its Hebrew root, means "ruby".

ברקת Bareket means "agate".

נופך Nofekh means "turquoise" or "garnet".

ספיר Sapir means "sapphire" (as you might guess from its transliteration).

יהלום Yahalom means "diamond" (so OUR street is the MOST precious!).

לשם Leshem means "opal".

2 comments:

Barry said...

I notice there is no Arabic translation of the street names. I thought they commonly used three languages on the street signs.

Arlan Wareham said...

Between cities, almost all highway signs are in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. But within cities, it can be different. In cities that have large populations of both Jews and Arabs (such as Haifa or Jerusalem, for example), they probably also use all 3 languages (or maybe it depends on the neighborhood -- I haven't really noticed). In cities like ours, that are almost totally Jewish, the Arabic names are not usually included, I think. I doubt that many of the Arabic cities even HAVE street signs!