is there a web site that can tell me how or y places get there names like forty acres road in canterbury kent?

Answer 1

Parrish records are a good way. Sometimes there will be a local historic society with journals or natural histories of the area. Selbourne has the Gilbert White Museum. His collected letters touch on his region from 1789 when they where published.
There is the Domesday book
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/ins/epntest/keytoepn.html
There is The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place ­
Names
Place annotations for Russell Hoban's 1980 novel Riddley Walker
http://www.graphesthesia.com/rw/places.htmlWalker.
BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/places/names/names_h.shtml
Dr Cullen's work on Kentish names
http://extranet.kent.gov.uk/discus/artslib/forum/messages/6/247.html?1167741745

Contact Canterbury library and ask. Libraries do searches like this.
http://library.kent.ac.uk/library/

Answer 2

The people who live in an area name places like "40 acres road" out of convinence in converation. Though it may be on no map if I tell my dad that I;m have a flat and on Yellow Fork Road he knows where I'm at. If I tell my brother I saw Bigfoot over in Crump's Hollow he knows exactly where thats at. Its passed from one generation to the next and spreads about the community. When the state makes a map or builds a road they aften adopt the local names.

Perhaps you will find this interesting.
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/engplnam.html

Answer 3

There are two ways I know of that roads get named. One is the government builds them and names them or a developer builds them and names them. I know of no place where these decisions are located, they are not necessarily recorded at all.