Why name of Queen St should not be changed

In a Sunday Newsday article of July 16, you reported a plan to change the name of Queen Street to Penny Street. What is desirable is that if anyone merits the honour of having a street named for him or her, this should be a new street, not requiring a change of name.

Penny Commissiong highly deserves a street being named after her but has it got to be a street already named — and named since 1797? And Queen Street itself is remarkable so far as naming is concerned. When the British soldiers invaded Spanish Trinidad in February 1797 and silenced Fort San Andrés, they called the first east-west street King Street to honour the British king, George III.

Having honoured the king they called the next street Queen Street for Queen Charlotte. The next east-west roadway they called Prince Street, and the following one, which was the last one up to that time, they named Duke Street.

This makes for special interest as the names King, Queen, Prince, and Duke are in descending order of royalty.

There are people who welcome the removal of such names mainly for being what they call “relics of colonialism.” True, they are such relics, but one cannot change history for that reason.

Have those people taken into account that the name “Trinidad” is also such a “relic of colonialism,” having come from Spain through Columbus? Also, the very language we speak, English, is a relic of English colonialism.

Should we change that too?

MICHAEL ANTHONY via email