The back lanes of Melbourne CBD's main streets are named for their bigger siblings.

Lonsdale Street has Little Lonsdale Street, Bourke Street has Little Bourke Street, Collins Street has Little Collins Street.

But Flinders Street bucks the convention with its back street, Flinders Lane.

That sparked the interest of former Melbourne resident Paul Bellios, so he contacted Curious Melbourne, an initiative where you can ask questions you'd like an ABC journalist to investigate.

Paul's question was simple: Why wasn't Flinders Lane called Little Flinders Street?

It turns out that, until 1948, it often was.

Decades of confusion

This 1880s photo of Flinders Lane was captioned 'Little Flinders Street'. ( Supplied: State Library of Victoria )

Held at the National Library of Australia is a photograph of Flinders Lane from 1880.

What's striking about this photo (apart from the lack of people) is the handwriting giving the location as Little Flinders Street.

One miscaptioned photo may not mean much, but there are many official documents using the incorrect name held at Victoria's state archives, Public Record Office Victoria (PROV).

A preliminary search of the PROV online catalogue reveals 37 records referring to addresses on Little Flinders Street, the vast majority of which were drinking establishments.

For example, on file is a defunct hotel licence and bill of sale for Tavistock House at "383 Little Flinders Street".

Australia's tallest building until 1912, the Australian Building (aka the APA Building) was demolished in 1980. ( Supplied: State Library of Victoria )

A more prestigious address to be officially misidentified was that of the 12-storey Australian Building, which when completed in 1889 was the tallest in the nation.

When it changed hands six years later, the bill of sale declared the building's address as the corner of Elizabeth and Little Flinders streets.

With Flinders Lane being the street's officially gazetted name, you might think this confusion might have been avoided had those involved simply looked at a map.

But a deeper search by PROV staff uncovered a map of Melbourne from 1866 naming the thoroughfare as Little Flinders Street.

University of Melbourne Professor of History Andrew May said, at one stage, Melbourne City Council even installed signposts labelling the street incorrectly.

The confusion persisted into the 1940s, with the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Authority using the wrong name in documents used for planning the construction of the City Loop.

An 1866 map held at PROV clearly marks Flinders Lane as Little Flinders Street. ( Supplied: Public Record Office Victoria )

In 1948, the Melbourne City Council finally took a stand, officially "re-affirming" Flinders Lane as the street's name, as proclaimed in the 1843 NSW Gazette.

But if it had been called that all along, why the confusion?

On the grid

OK, skip ahead if you know this bit.

At the very heart of Melbourne lies a cross-hatch of streets known as the Hoddle Grid, named for surveyor Robert Hoddle, its designer.

In 1837 he and Governor Sir Richard Bourke travelled from Sydney to sort out groups from Van Diemen's Land, who were attempting to settle the mainland without first gaining permission from the Crown.

One pioneer, John Batman, claimed to hold a private treaty with the local Wurundjeri tribe that gave his group ownership of 500,000 acres in exchange for blankets, clothes, handkerchiefs, tools and flour.

Upon hearing of the deal, Bourke proclaimed any treaty with Indigenous Australians invalid and declared anyone occupying Australian land without Britain's permission a trespasser.

On arrival in Melbourne, Bourke and Hoddle divided the land and auctioned it to those trespassers on behalf of His Majesty's Government.

Settlers who had built homes were booted off the land, said National Centre for Australia Studies historian Liz Rushen.

"Quite a few of the buildings had to be demolished because they were built over what became Hoddle's roads," Dr Rushen said.

Melbourne as it looked in 1838, shaped by surveyor Robert Hoddle's grid design. ( National Library of Australia )

Hoddle designed the new settlement with wide streets, but Governor Bourke insisted on inserting smaller parallel laneways.

Bourke wanted there to be rear access to the city's buildings, said Maxwell Gordon Lay, author of Melbourne Miles: The Story of Melbourne's Roads.

"What he said in his statement was they were 'to give owners the means of getting cows in and out of their backyards'," he said.

Hoddle ceded the Governor his "Little Streets", but his early surveys don't dignify them with names.

Little Lonsdale, Little Bourke and Little Collins streets were gazetted together in 1844, but Flinders Lane was officially named five months earlier in September 1843.

However, decrees from the Colonial Office in NSW regarding Melbourne sometimes had limited effect, Dr Lay said.

"There was a big dichotomy between what head office in Sydney wanted to happen and what Hoddle and the people down in Melbourne were making happen."

Rise of 'The Lane'

In the 1840s, so-called Little Flinders Street was known for being home to some particularly rowdy pubs, Dr May said.

As the 20th Century neared, Flinders Lane became the centre of the city's clothing industry, or "rag trade".

Flinders Lane and adjoining Degraves Street (pictured) were home to Melbourne's fashion industry until the 1980s. ( National Library of Australia: Wolfgang Sievers photographic archive )

The street was affectionately known as "the Lane", said Dr May, and the rag traders who dwelt there dubbed themselves "Lane-people".

"My sense is it was particularly the portion of the street between Swanston Street and Elizabeth Street that was known as 'the Lane'."

It was the Lane-people who began the push to recognise Flinders Lane as the one-and-only name for the street, said Dr Lay.

"They petitioned the council … to call it Flinders Lane," Dr Lay said.

Melbourne's first road?

We still don't know the answer to Paul's question: Why was it called "Lane" in the first place?

But it is possible that the name even predates the Hoddle Grid.

Dr May said Flinders Lane would have been one of the early illegal settlement's first roads.

"On the northern side of the Yarra, the flood plain of the river actually went up to where Flinders Lane is," he said.

"Logically, that is where the settlers built their early houses … [and] allied to that is a track that went east-west parallel to the river."

He said we do not know from the archives whether or not the fledgling road was known locally as "the Lane", or indeed had any name.

But he said it was possible that it was named differently to the other Little Streets because it was already known as a thoroughfare.

"There is a sense that Flinders Lane … had some other kind of pre-eminence in the consciousness of the settlers that made them want to call it something different."