For Instagram: Are roads always named after important people?


Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Abstract. Instagram is not only something to write on, for some academics. It also provides questions to do research into, where the answers may involve no reference to Instagram whatsoever, or the Internet in general. In this paper, I take up a question suggested to me by a Singaporean poster: are roads always named after important people? I propose that some roads may give a misleading impression of an individual figure's importance, focusing on Canadian author Alice Munro, a candidate for a road name if not for the scandal. Even if Munro is worth including in a history book, a road name downplays the role of the background team: the publishers, agents, and more who solved problems of the literary field. Also given the practice of some universities promoting the old lesser works of elite universities, as if that were their role, there is no reason to think some roads would not be named after figures of lesser importance. The assumption of importance is not regarded as false, but misleading. However, after reading a draft of this essay, I did speculate that a road may be named by someone of no importance, so that anyone who does not research would learn that ordinary assumptions about the world are wrong: a message from the powerful to a clever student.
Draft version: version 3 (30 July 2026 slight edits; v2 22nd February 2026 - appendix added, very slight changes to main body; v1 24 January 2026)
PDF available at: https://www.academia.edu/150265164/For_Instagram_Are_roads_always_named_after_important_people


        Instagram: what is Instagram? And what is Instagram for me, or what is its significance for me? The Internet allows us to share documents with audiences worldwide (but they must be able to find them!). One can also share videos. Videos are composed of a sequence of images, one replacing the other so that watching one is often like watching a scene from a play,  and there are often sounds too. Instagram is a site for sharing videos and pictures. I use it for this purpose. I also write papers on Instagram, as if I were an academic still, conducting research on its comedians. And I find now that Instagram provides me with questions I can address without even referring to Instagram in the answer, or one question anyway. I picked up a question from a video which appeared on my Instagram feed, by Singaporean actress Caitanya Tan. She is discussing a road in Singapore, namely Tessensohn Road. She tells us that the road was named after John Richard Edwin Tessensohn (1855-1926), who was a big deal she says - in other words, a person of some importance. A big deal? Of course, she "parenthetically" says, otherwise why name a road after him? Yes, here is an assumption one might make in general: a road is only named after a person if that person is important. But is this true?


"Everyone is important," some will surely say. In response, I suppose the assumption's reference to importance is more fully: the person's name ought to figure in some history book, owing to their achievements. Historians cannot research everything and yet their name ought to figure: they have that kind of importance. That will do as a preliminary clarification here and I shall move on to answering the question.


Even if the assumption is true, it can be misleading about importance. To illustrate this, I shall refer to Canadian author Alice Munro. I was reading about Munro on Wikipedia: "Munro had a longtime association with editor and publisher Douglas Gibson. When Gibson left Macmillan of Canada in 1986 to launch the Douglas Gibson Books imprint at McClelland & Stewart, Munro returned the advance Macmillan had paid her for The Progress of Love so that she could follow Gibson to the new company." What I strongly suspect is this. <There is a community of Canadians involved in literature and they are solving various problems, such as how to massively publicize an author so that they are known worldwide. At various points in this community's history, they can get a writer of short stories of the calibre of Alice Munro. If it is not Munro herself, it is someone else. But prior to solving the problems, the author will be less known and not win any Nobel prize. That only comes after solving more problems.> If Alice Munro did not have the scandals surrounding her, her road could probably be named after her. She does deserve to feature in a history of short stories in the Chekhovian tradition: poignantly portraying a slice of everyday life. But a road named after her is misleading about her importance, if my suspicion is true. For Alice Munro to have this prominence requires a community to solve various problems in the literary field, the literary area, the literary arena, the literary profession first, and at any (or almost any) point in this process they are able to attract a short story writer of comparable talent. (I should say that even if I were offered the opportunity to publish such short stories for such a publisher, with a 30% chance of a Nobel prize, I probably would not do it. But I can write fairytales too. If I were given a reasonable opportunity of going to head-to-head against Hans Christian Andersen or the German fairytale tradition, I would be interested! "It is another 100 years before a Canadian company can put an author in that position"? It is strange though: I am prepared to write on Munro.)


The argument above emphasizes the achievements of a background team over the starring individual. I doubt that it is always the case that the starring individual is less important, however.


Anyway, I want to raise another concern about simply inferring historical importance from having a road name: another route to the conclusion that the inference is misleading, if not simply false. The people whom roads are named after may well be people who scrape into the historical important league. My argument for this will be a little complicated. At various provincial universities of England, we find academics who devote themselves to preserving figures of some important but lesser importance, figures who were based at elite universities. For example, Giussepina D'Oro at Keele focuses on the Oxford University historian-philosopher R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943). She clarifies his ideas and conveniently relates them to modern debates. For another example, Maria Dimova-Cookson is an expert on the earlier Oxford university philosopher, T.H. Green (1836-1882). Collingwood and T.H. Green scrape into historical importance at best. ("But how can you manage without Collingwood's The Idea of Nature?") Why do they focus on these people? 


One answer is an invisible hand model. What is an invisible hand model? Let's start with a country which has needs - or its individuals do - for food production and medicine production. What should the government do? One answer is that it should identify capable people and instruct them into these areas, with prison's being the alternative. An invisible hand model tells us that the problem can instead be solved by leaving people to pursue their own interests. An individual will think, "How can I make a living? I must do something for which I have suitable talent and for which there is demand." This leads to enough individuals working in the needed areas. Moving from food and medicine production to academic research, an invisible hand model can also be applied. Individuals such as Dimova-Cookson and D'Oro think, "How can I make a pleasant living as an academic. I must find a gap in the literature for which there is demand, a demand I can meet, and focus on meeting that." Thus we get books on these lesser figures, Collingwood and T.H. Green.


A different answer is that it is the job of the elite universities of England to produce cutting edge figures and the job of the provincial universities to promote them, including past figures who scape into "the historical importance league." The English university culture encourages that and discourages anything else, even if there is market demand for something else. Thus D'Oro at Keele and Dimova-Cookson at Durham work on figures who scape historical importance.


Now if you accept this second answer - and from my experience, I don't think it is entirely false - you probably think that roads in a provincial city could end up named after lesser figures too. "Yes, the roads here are named after people of historical importance, but they are bottom of the historical importance league." So far the assumption we began evaluating does not seem untrue, but there is reason to worry that it is misleading.


Appendix (added 22nd February)
After writing this essay, I did conceive of an argument for why a road may be named after someone unimportant, or unimportant from the perspective of great-man style of history. They have no unusual remarkable achievements to their name. A young student does research on whom their road is named after. And they pick up a message from those with power thereby: "Your assumptions about how the world works are false."


References
N.a. n.d. Alice Muno. Wikipedia. Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro
caitofalltraits. (Caitanya Tan.) 2026. How to pronounce Tessensohn Road. Instagram 22nd January 2026 (that is the date Instagram gives me; it was online earlier). Available at: https://www.instagram.com/caitofalltraits/


See also
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. Tessonsohn Road. Available at:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYIFtcExhfR/
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. The meaning of Bob Dylan's Nobel prize. Available at:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbINeixAvzB/