The Boerkoelweg in Wijster

Some time ago, we discovered, more or less by chance, that a few streets appear to be named after the family. The first discovery was Boerkoelweg in Wijster.

Wijster is a village in the province of Drenthe, between Beilen and Hoogeveen in the northern Netherlands. See the map in the right here. The location is indicated by the red star.

The Boerkoelweg in Wijster was created after an expansion for housing in the years after 1955. Nearby was an old cattle watering place, known in the local dialect as boerenkoele (farmers' cool). At the time, the Beilen municipality's street name committee had to decide on the new street names. A committee charged with designating street names always wants meaningful ones. One of these street names near the old cattle watering place became Boerkoelweg. The committee killed two birds with one stone. On the one hand, it met the residents' wish for attention to this historic cattle watering place, and on the other, the name Boerkoel was that of a well-known pastor, Jan Dirk Boerkoel (born 1889), from the area at the time. Although no minutes of this meeting were available, the committee was happy with such a street name for the Christian village of Wijster, as several streets were already named after pastors. The cattle watering place has since disappeared entirely due to new housing development.

Some family members who live nearby have already visited Boerkoelweg in Wijster to see it for themselves and take some pictures. See the picture in the left.

zur Buhrkuhle in Bochum

Another discovery of a family street name was made in Germany, in Bochum in the Ruhr region. This is the street name "zur Burkuhle." See its location on the map above, indicated by the red asterisk. Inquiries with the municipality of Bochum about the origin of this name revealed that there had once been a cattle watering place in this neighborhood. Currently, this road "zur Buhrkuhle" no longer leads to a cattle watering place, but to a beautiful sports park for soccer and athletics. It remains unclear to what extent a German street name committee also considered the name of Jan-Carsten Burkuhl, a WDSF athlete. No documentation is available on this matter.

On the map to the right, the location of the street zur Burkuhle is indicated with a red line. There is no photo of a family member who passed by there and photographed the street sign.

Be that as it may, it's interesting to know that there are a few street names bearing our family name. The remarkable thing about this naming is that in the Netherlands, the original name of the cattle watering place wasn't used, but our family name (spelled differently) was. You'd think there must be a purpose behind it. But we can only speculate. The name zur Burkuhle in Germany, however, seems to originally refer to a cattle watering place.