Mapping dialects, or: how do people refer to the narrow walkway between or along buildings?

(sub)urbanite

Post updated 13/3/23, updated again 25/8/23

Over the years I’ve realised that language and mapping intersect in all sorts of interesting ways. Back in 2014 I had a Twitter conversation with the urbanist Rob Cowan (https://www.robcowan.co.uk/) about the various names for alleys, back streets, and so on – and then yesterday the question arose again when discussing the mapping of alleys in Nanjing with Yichang Sun, a PhD student at the Space Syntax Lab.

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A quick Google brought to my attention a fascinating research project: a dialect atlas of British English. Its website includes a map of the geographical distribution of “How do people refer to the narrow walkway between or along buildings?” (https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/walkway/ – project credits: Dr Laurel MacKenzie, Dr George Bailey, and Dr Danielle Turton). The terms range from alleyway, to cut, entry, gennel/ginnel, jitty, passage, snicket, and twitchel. Yet again, when posting this on Twitter, a whole new string of alternatives have been reported, from ‘opes’ in Cornwall (and Plymouth), ‘closes’ in Scotland, and ‘vennel’ in Scotland and the North East, to ‘twitten’ in Sussex. Indeed, I recall that back in 2014 Rob Cowan posted about ‘chare’ being used in Newcastle-upon-Tyne The geographical distribution is itself insightful. One respondent pointed out that the migration from Northern Ireland to Liverpool is reflected in the common usage of ‘entry’ (see below).

Snapshot from map of “How do people refer to the narrow walkway between or along buildings?” from Our Dialects project. Website by Dr George Bailey; https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/walkway/. Project Credits: Dr Laurel MacKenzie, Dr George Bailey, and Dr Danielle Turton. Accessed 16/12/2022.
Update 13th March 2023: Since publishing this post a flurry of additional tweets generated by a comment from the actor  Adrian Edmonson, produced quite a few more synonyms. In addition to "10-foot in Hull, additions to the list included back, "the narrow walkway running parallel to a row of houses", and jigger and twitchel, while the following were interestingly geographic specific:

Alley

Back Alley, Back Double, Back Lane, Back Opening (Suffolk), and from Liverpool: Back Crack, Back Entry and Back Jigger

Barton in Bruton

Chare in Newcastle-upon-Tyne & environs

Close in Scotland, or Close-y

Cut for alley between buildings in Durham

Folley in Colchester

Ginnel in Manchester

Gullet in South Durham; Gulley and Gullet in Stafford and the Black Country

Gwli in South Wales

Jennel in Chesterfield, Durham

Jitty for footway getting from one road to another in Leicester

Lane (or Vennel sometimes) in Lanarkshire

Snicket in Huddersfield (occasionally Ginnel)

Tewer, also Tuer and Ture in Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire

Twitten in Sussex

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Bow Back Rivers map from the Canal Rivers Trust website
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Image from the Oxford English Dictionary online. Entry for: “back-, comb. form”. OED Online. December 2022. Oxford University Press.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14337?redirectedFrom=Back-double (accessed December 16, 2022).
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Published by (sub)urbanite

Professor of Urban Form and Society and Director of the Space Syntax Lab, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Online in a personal capacity.

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