Two Streets With Almost One Name

Many visitors notice that Amsterdam street names are long. Fewer notice that some of them come in pairs. Two streets can share almost the whole name and still lie on opposite sides of the old centre. The difference is one small word at the start, and that word is easy to leave out.

Old side and new side

The oldest part of the city is divided into two halves. Historically they were called the old side and the new side. In Dutch, those are oude zijde and nieuwe zijde. Several streets and canals still carry these words in their names. So you find names that begin with Oudezijds on one side, and names that begin with Nieuwezijds on the other. After that first word, the rest of the name can be the same.

If you write only the second half of the name, you have written half of two different addresses. A map app will choose one of them. It may not be yours.

How it happened

A guest had shortened the name of their street. It was very long, and they left out the first word to make the message quicker to type. The rest was perfect: the house number, the floor, the bell. The reply checked the address on a map and found two possible places, about ten minutes' walk apart. It asked: Oudezijds or Nieuwezijds? The guest looked at their confirmation. It was the other one from the one the map had picked first.

No harm was done, because the question came before anyone travelled. But it shows why a short word at the start of a name is never decoration.

Other small words that matter

Oude and nieuwe are not the only examples. You will meet several other words at the start of Amsterdam street names:

• Eerste, Tweede and Derde, often written 1e, 2e and 3e, meaning first, second and third;
• Korte and Lange, meaning short and long;
• Binnen and Buiten, meaning inner and outer.

In each case, the word changes the street. 1e and 2e with the same name are two parallel streets, not one street with two parts. Keep the word, exactly as it appears.

The ending matters too

The end of a street name is just as important. A gracht is a canal with a street on each side. A straat is a street. A dwarsstraat is a short cross street. The same first half can end in any of these, and each ending is a different place. A guest who writes a name with gracht when the address says straat may be one corner away, or a long walk.

Why a translation app makes it worse

If you write your message in your own language and then translate it, the app may try to translate the street name too. Oudezijds may come out as something like old side, and a gracht as a canal. The result is not an address anyone can find. Street names must stay in Dutch, every letter of them. The page on booking with a translation app shows how to keep them safe.

Hotels are not safe from it either

A hotel address feels safer, because the hotel name finds the building. Usually it does. But a hotel with two buildings, or with an entrance on a second street, can still be half an address. If the hotel sits on a corner of two streets with similar names, write the street of the door you will use. A hotel name plus the full street name, with every small word, leaves nothing to chance.

A simple method

Do not type the street name at all. Copy it from your hotel or rental confirmation and paste it into the message. Copying keeps every word, every letter and every mark. Then paste the whole address into a map app and check that the pin lands on your building. If it lands somewhere else, one small word is probably missing.

This takes perhaps thirty seconds. It removes the one kind of address mistake that no amount of good English can prevent, because it is not about English at all. The address guide explains the rest of the line, from house numbers to floors.