Names of New York explicates Gotham’s place-names to intoxicating—if occasionally numbing—effect. The result is a vivid toponymic history of an ever-changing metropolis.

The author brings both impressive detail and rich history to his exploration of a variety of naming conventions, such as those taken from the landscape or terrain, names referencing the role of the street or the vocations of its inhabitants, streets commemorating historical events, and more. A lot of ground is covered but it never feels like something is missing from this wide-ranging work.

Jelly-Schapiro’s sprightly prose and ear for New Yorkers’ stories shows, if nothing else, that place-names are less permanent than the ground they identify, and changing them helps forget a past or shape a future..

... an entertaining education in the ways of a city that never stops transforming, meaning new names in the future.

... fascinating.