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“The names of streets and squares represent our cultural heritage, which we decide to keep or throw away from the past, reveal which parts of history guide the present. But who decides which names to remember? […] And if the streets around us commemorate executioners and tyrants, do we have the civil responsibility to modify them or do we assume them as a crystallized and immutable stoic precipitate? “

Mask, D. (2020). The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power

Name something means affirm power over it, when we name a street over someone or something we express and represent the principles of our society through the action of who the street is named after, giving them meaning and value.

Toponymy is a part of linguistics that deals with the set of names attributed to geographical entities and is dedicated to their study in order to deepen the mode of formation and diffusion on the geographical and historical level.

The average number of Italian streets named after women varies from 3 to 5%, at least half of which are named after Madonnas, Saints or traditional female figures. The average number of streets named after men is 40%.
Street names are a question of power and identity, is nothing but a definitive confirmation of the “environmental misogyny” of our society.

In the 1055 streets of Bergamo, 623 of them are named after men, while only 40 streets are named after women.
Of the 40 streets named after women, 20 are named after religious figures, 6 are named after traditional figures, and only 13 are named after women who have actually existed.