2009 street map of London’s Soho district
19 November 2021
Soho is the name of neighborhoods in two major cities, London and New York. The names, however, have very different etymologies, although the name of New York’s Soho was undoubtedly influenced and popularized by the name of the London district.
Surprising as it may seem, London’s Soho takes its name from an Anglo-Norman hunting cry, given when releasing the hounds to alert the dogs to the presence of the rabbit or hare (cf. tallyho) The district, now very urbanized, was once a hunting ground for nobility living in London.
The cry first appears on a Scottish seal from 1307 that bears an image of a hare with the motto Sohou Sohou. And a manuscript on hunting from c.1420 by William Twiti, chief huntsman for King Edward II, and later amplified and extended, probably by John Giffard, has this to say about the cry:
And if ye hounte at the hare, ye shalle sey atte vncouplyng, hors de couple, avaunt!, and after, iij tymes, So-how, so-how, so-how! And ye shalle seye, Sa, sa, cy avaunt, so-how!
(And if you hunt the hare, you must say when uncoupling the hounds, uncouple forward!, and after three times, Soho, soho, soho! And you must say, Here, here, come on, soho!)
By the late seventeenth century, Soho had become the name for the district, a legacy from its former use as a hunting ground. A 1675 broadsheet advertisement for a riding academy, interestingly one that used mechanical horses, gives the academy’s location as:
In the MILITARY GROUND between LEICESTER-HOUSE and the SOHOE.
And in 1677, a biography of the thief Thomas Sadler, who gained infamy and was hanged for stealing the ceremonial mace from the Lord High Chancellor’s home while that eminence was asleep, refers to the district as Soe-hoe:
This is certain, That when he became Capable of Working, he was put forth to the Honest Laborious Trade of Brickmaking; which he followed for two or three years after the Dreadful Fire in Sixty Six, both at Knights-bridge, Soe-hoe, and other places neer the Town, and had gain'd the Creditable Repute of a Civil Industrious Youngman; till happening into the unhappy Acquaintance of a Lewd Woman in St. Gileses, she seduc'd him to the Expence of his Money, and neglect of his business; and brought him acquainted with a Gang of thieves.
2013 street map of New York City’s Soho district
New York’s Soho, on the other hand, has a much more prosaic origin. It’s an acronym for South of Houston Street. (Which, by the way, is pronounced /haʊ stən/, unlike like the city in Texas, which is /hju stən/. The street is named for William Houstoun, who spelled his name in various ways and represented Georgia in the Continental Congress and at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The Texas city, in contrast, is named for General Sam Houston, the first president of an independent Texas.) The district, the South Houston Industrial/Study Area was defined in the early 1960s when it was proposed as a neighborhood ripe for demolition, to be replaced by expressways and middle-income housing, despite it being a thriving neighborhood of businesses and Black and Puerto Rican housing. The New York Times of 2 June 1963, describes the district, but does not yet use the acronym Soho:
The City Planning Commission, in its report to the Mayor, asserts the section—known as the South Houston Study Area—should be preserved for the 651 business establishments it says are flourishing there.
[...]
However, the Middle Income Cooperators of Greenwich Village, a citizens’ housing group that claims 5,000 members, is putting heavy pressure on the city to demolish the 12-block area and put up middle-income housing.
[...]
The Planning Commission’s staff found 60 per cent of the workers in the area to be Negro and Puerto Rican. These groups have a high unemployment rate in the city.
The report asserts that between 1954 and 1958 about 62,000 production jobs were eliminated in Manhattan and 12,000 more in other boroughs through attrition of industrial space. It cites the consequent increased unemployment and welfare expenses.
The South Houston Industrial Area extends from Houston Street south to Broome Street between Broadway and West Broadway. The commission says it is a thriving business community. Major rehabilitation, it adds, would result in rent increases that the businesses could not afford.
The proposed demolition never happened, but the gentrification did, with the industrial spaces turned into artist lofts before the artists were driven out by rising rents. The acronym Soho is in place by 1970. From the New York Post of 1 April 1970:
With the recent influx of galleries in the south of Houston St. area (now dubbed “Soho”), general interest in lofts is up again. And non-artists, charmed by the relative low rents and generous spaces, are now competing for the little space that’s left. This added to the area’s new-found glamor has started to raise the rents to uptown levels.
While the name of the New York City neighborhood does not directly come from the name of its London counterpart, its coinage and continued use was undoubtedly influenced by London’s Soho.
Sources:
Academy. By the Kings Priviledge. London: John Wells, 1675. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Bain, Joseph, ed. “Seals Connected with Scotland, Unattached to Documents or Only to Fragments.” Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, vol. 2 of 5. Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1884, 539. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Burnham, Alexander. “Housing Dispute Put up to Mayor.” New York Times, 2 June 1963, 46. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. so-hou, int.
Mills, A. D. A Dictionary of London Place-Names, second ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, Oxfordreference.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Soho, n.2, soho, int. and n.1.
Sadler’s Memoirs: or, the History of the Life and Death of that Famous Thief Thomas Sadler. London: P. Brooksby, 1677, 3–5 (pages misnumbered, there is no page 4). Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Scott-McNabb, David. The Middle English Text of The Art of Hunting by William Twiti. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009, 17, 64. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.xii.
Solochek, Beverly. “The Lofty Approach to Living.” New York Post, 1 April 1970, 50 (Magazine page 6). Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Wright, Thomas and James Orchard Halliwell. “Le Venery de Twety.” Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. 1. London: John Russell Smith, 1845, 152. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.xii.
Image credit: Peter Fitzgerald, 2009, OpenStreetMap. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.