[5] In addition, roads in proximity to one another often received names that were similar or followed a common trend.
[10] After Singapore's independence in 1965, the government adopted new road-naming policies as part of its nation-building effort.
[11] Opposition from property developers and residents in residential areas, and a lack of available Malay terms for naming new streets put paid to the policy,[13] which was amended in 1968 to discourage the use of Malay in favour of names that reflected Singapore’s multi-ethnic society.
This proposal was vetoed by the Finance Minister, but numerical naming was subsequently used in public housing estates in Singapore from the 1960s to the 1990s.
[14] Besides the adoption of new road-naming policies, the Singapore government also set about making official road names, which had hitherto only been provided in the Latin script, more accessible to the non-English speaking Chinese population.
[15] Subsequently, in the 1980s, the government attempted to change all Chinese place and road names to follow the Hanyu Pinyin system.
Road names in Singapore do not utilise many Malay generic elements commonly found in neighbouring Malaysia, such as Lebuh ("street"), Tingkat ("terrace"), Cangkat ("rise"), Lebuhraya ("avenue", "highway" or "expressway"), etc.
Certain generic elements are used only for a specific purpose, such as "Central" which is often reserved for roads that are located within town centres.
Road names in mature residential towns and estates (for example, Ang Mo Kio and Tampines) generally follow a numerical scheme.
While suffixes like "Drive" and "Street" may be used interchangeably in most cases, some generic terms tend to only be used on roads that fulfil a certain criteria.