L'ODONYMIE, PARIS ET LES ARBRES

As a modest contribution to the most often neglected field of odonymy, or study of street names, this paper focuses specifically on the street names in Paris and, among them, only on those made up mth tree names. In this selected corpus, the trees may appear under three forms : 1. the tree itself (rue des saules, the willow, rue des acacias, the acacia tree), 2. a patronym (rue La Fayette, the beech tree), rue André Chénier (the oak), 3. a toponym (rue du Limousin, the elm tree). Together with the half million trees thriving in this city, here is an unexpected evidence of the omniprésence of nature in Paris.