In European towns of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the sounds people heard were very different from those of today. Yet the
difference goes much deeper: whereas today we try to escape city noise, for the inhabitants of
early modern towns sound served as a crucial source of information. It formed a semiotic system,
conveying news, helping people to locate themselves in time and in space, and making them part of
an ‘auditory community’. Sound helped to construct identity and to structure
relationships. The evolution of this information system reflects changes in social and political organization and in attitudes towards time and urban space.
The houses in early modern European cities almost all had names and signs. These are usually taken to be an early form of advertising, or else a way of finding one's way around the city in times before street names and numbering. This article argues that their primary purpose was to mark the individual, family or ethnic identity of the house owner or tenant. During the eighteenth century the names and signs changed in character, and by the mid-nineteenth century they had almost disappeared from city centres, primarily as a result of changes in individual and family identity among the urban middle classes, and of the transformation of neighbourhood communities under the pressure of urban economic and social integration. The evolution of house names and shop signs therefore illustrates the changing relationship between the city's residents and the urban environment.
