Almost every municipality in Italy has a street named “via Roma” or a variant thereof, thanks to a decision of Mussolini to make it mandatory. The Italian wikipedia has a list of the 60-something municipalities (out of almost 8000) that don’t have one, either because they weren’t a municipality at that time, or because they got rid of it afterwards.
I don’t have numbers for those, but other names that are extremely common are Garibaldi, Cavour, Mazzini and Vittorio Emanuele, named after important people involved in the unification of Italy. A tiny number of places also have a street named after Anita Garibaldi (Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wife, and fellow fighter for independence). A lot of streets are named after other people involved in the unification, but usually local ones, so the actual names would change depending on which part of Italy the street is in.
Geographical names are also common, with the names of nearby towns and city being pretty high on the list, but also other Italian regions, sites of battles of WW1 and Europe.
If there is a via delle Rimembranze (memory street) it will usually be the street that leads to the cemetery.
Most other streets are named after people, sometimes famous (dead) ones, but often people of very local relevance, not even known by the people who live nearby.
I was not aware of the Mussolini mandate for Via Roma. (I moved to the USA when I was 5, so missed much of the nuances of Italy history). My parents now live in Finale Ligure, and despite the many times I’ve been there, I don’t remember ever seeing a Via Roma. I looked it up on Google Maps, and low and behold… there is a one block long, pedestrian only walkway called “Via Roma”. As if the town leaders got the order and said, “I guess we have to do it, but we don’t have to like it”
In small towns located in the middle part of America we have a lot of streets with tree names (Elm, Oak, Maple etc) as well as early Presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, McKinley)
In Taiwan, where I spend most of my time, they also have a lot of ZhongShan Rd (中山路) but probably even more streets are named ZhongZheng Rd (中正路) after Chinese leader, and ROC president Chiang Kai-shek. For foreigners it’s kind of confusing, but Chinese people in the old times (especially if their were aristocrats, or had some important jobs to do) changed their names all the time. So that’s why Chiang Kai-shek had the name ZhongZheng (中正) - it was influenced by Sun Yat-sen (who was ZhongShan).
In my original home country, Hungary the streets are named after popular personalities. So after 1989 end of communist regime many streets were renamed. But the most popular ones - mostly poets or freedom fighters - survived.
Petőfi Sándor - poet and freedom fighter from 1848-49 revolution
Kossuth Lajos - politician during the 1848-49 revolution
Jókai - writer and freedom fighter from the 1900s
And only after this comes some “common names” like 9. Béke (Peace) and 10. Szabadság (Freedom).
(source)
If a town or villages has at least 2 streets one of them (but probably both of them) have names from this list. Back in Hungary I also lived at one of the “famous poet’s” street…
