For years, Lisa Neuman of Plano has lived in a Postal Service version of The Matrix –trapped between truth and a false, computer-driven reality that has wreaked havoc on her, um, mailbox.

MIKE STONE\Special Contributor

Homeowner Lisa Neuman is pictured at the end of the cul-de-sac by the new street signed baring the changed name of the road Leslie Court in Plano, Texas, Friday, August 22, 2008. Neuman lead an effort to have the name changed from Lesli due to frequent misspellings of the name causing inconveniences from finding the appropriate streets in online mapping websites to registering a garage sale with the city.

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Thanks to a recent City Council change, however, Ms. Neuman could soon see relief.

The proper spelling of the tidy six-house cul-de-sac in central Plano has always been Lesli Court. But because of a spelling glitch early in the subdivision's existence, mapping firms and Web sites have long identified the street as "Leslie Court."

The U.S. Postal Service has used both names.

At the behest of Ms. Neuman and her neighbors, Plano's City Council voted this month to change the street name to Leslie Court in hopes of ending the confusion.

"It was just one of those quirky things," said council member Mabrie Jackson, who lives several streets away and proposed the name change on behalf of those in the cul-de-sac.

Behind the change is a story of aggravation underscored by the growing importance of online maps and Web databases in people's lives.

"I didn't want to rock the boat," said Ms. Neuman, 45, a homemaker who has lived on the street for about five years. "But we had to do something."

Most might shrug off the misspelling as little more than an annoyance. Ms. Neuman would have viewed it that way, too, if not for the headaches her street name has caused.

Navigation systems and Web maps sometimes direct those seeking the Plano street to Lesli Lane in Frisco, she said.

The discrepancy also forced Ms. Neuman to intentionally misspell her street name on credit-card applications and online services because Lesli Court is sometimes rejected as nonexistent.

Ms. Neuman tried talking to the post office but could not get in contact with a supervisor. She later complained to the Plano council after the city prohibited her from purposely misspelling her street name on an application for a garage-sale permit.

Neighbor Rebecca Sehnert, a stay-at-home mother who lives in the cul-de-sac, said the street name has caused her heartburn, too.

"The biggest thing is whenever we give directions to people," said Ms. Sehnert, 38. "The street sign has it one way. The city has it another."

How the mix-up began in the record books is unclear. Ms. Neuman and others guess that the name Lesli Court might have been inspired by a friend or relation of the subdivision's developer, a common practice.

Records show that the neighborhood, Forest Creek Estates, was developed in the early 1980s by a now-defunct Dallas real estate partnership, Shuler-Reese & Co. The firm dissolved more than two decades ago.

The Lesli-Leslie confusion appears to have started early on. Some city records, property appraisal documents and the cul-de-sac's street sign give the spelling of Lesli. But other records, including decades-old building permits, offer both spellings.

The discrepancies have continued since. Map publisher Rand McNally and popular Web sites like Google and MapQuest identify the street as Leslie. A rival map firm, Mapsco, calls it Lesli.

The Postal Service had both Lesli and Leslie on file, spokesman McKinney Boyd said. The service has since corrected its database to reflect the recent council change.

Plano is no stranger to street-naming controversies, perhaps because the city maintains more than 1,000 miles of roads.

In 1986, some residents assailed the City Council for renaming Carpenter Road to Legacy Drive at the request of Electronic Data Systems Corp. Many complaints came from the descendants of early Plano settler R.W. Carpenter, the road's namesake.

And in 2001, the city rejected a proposal to rename either Parker Road or Avenue K in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The renaming of Ms. Neuman's cul-de-sac is not getting quite as much attention.

The change will cost taxpayers a total of $30, the price for a new street sign. For the six homeowners on the cul-de-sac– now Leslie Court – that is money well-spent.

Now that the new sign is erected, the cul-de-sac joins at least nine other streets in the Dallas area named "Leslie."

Plano is changing Lesli Court to Leslie Court at the request of residents. Other area streets with a similar name:

Anna, Balch Springs, Coppell, Highland Village, Irving: Leslie Lane

Dallas: Leslie Street

Frisco: Lesli Lane

Hutchins, Wylie: Leslie Drive

Mesquite: Lesley Lane

Sherman: Leslie Avenue

SOURCE: Mapsco