Researchers at the School of Management at the University of St Andrews compared the street names of Scottish Westminster parliamentary constituencies with a recent population census asking people to identify their national identity.

In areas with a lower number of Union-themed street names – such as Queen, Royal, Regent, or London – people were more likely to describe themselves as having a “Scottish identity only”.

The study also found that religion remains a “salient” topic with the word “church” featuring in the top four of the ranking of most common British street names.

People in areas with a high percentage of religious-related street names, such as “church” or “chapel”, were more likely to identify as Christian.

Researcher Dr Daniel Oto-Peralias said yesterday: “Street names are cultural markers of a town and its history and can be used as a rich source of information to create socio-cultural indicators at the regional and local level.

"With the help of data software with text analysis capabilities, it is feasible to analyse hundreds of thousands of street names to extract themes and trends capturing the culture and history of the population.”

Dr Oto-Peralias found other topics can also be studied using street name data, for example gender inequality.

The data indicate that the street “map” is strongly biased toward men – reflecting a history of fewer women in the public sphere. He said: “This large bias naturally generates controversy and indeed there are some social movements fighting for more gender equality in street names.

“This is an important issue because street names have strong symbolic power and can contribute to the perpetuation of social and cultural values.”

The paper, What Do Street Names Tell Us? The ‘City Text’ as Socio-cultural Data is published in the Journal of Economic Geography.