Q. I have a disagreement with a coworker about how to alphabetize street names with foreign words in them. I live in San Diego, so there are a lot of Spanish street names. I, for example, would file Via Hacienda under V. She argues that because Via means “street,” it should be under H instead. She reasons that if it were House Street, we would file it under H. My argument is that since we are not speaking Spanish, we should follow standard English alphabetizing rules.
A. You are right; there could be any number of non-English terms among the street names in San Diego, and unless all readers knew all the languages, the list would be useless. You can see that the city government of San Francisco puts Via Bufano under V. Another solution is to list such names in both locations, or to put in blind entries:
Via Hacienda. See Hacienda, Via
or
Hacienda, Via. See Via Hacienda