Place names considered unusual

Hell, Norway

Unusual place names are names for cities, towns, and other regions which are considered non-ordinary in some manner. This can include place names which are also swear words, inadvertently humorous or highly charged words,^[1] as well as place names of unorthodox spelling and pronunciation, including especially short or long names.

Unusual descriptive place names

Inaccessible Island, a remotely-located extinct volcanic island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, is so named for the difficulty in landing on the island and penetrating its interior due to the rough terrain.^[2][3][4]

Death Valley, California, one of the hottest locations on Earth, got its English name after 13 pioneers died trying to cross the harsh desert valley during the California Gold Rush of 1849.^[5] The highest recorded land temperature, 134° F (56.7° C), was recorded inside Death Valley at Furnace Creek, California in 1913.^[6]

Place names which are homonyms for other words in the same language

Boring, Oregon is named after William H. Boring, who settled in the area in the 1870s.^[7] The town name is a homonym for the word boring, and the town often makes puns based on its name. Boring's town motto is "The most exciting place to live" and it has taken on the similarly named Dull, Scotland as its sister city.^[8][9][10] Bland Shire, New South Wales, Australia, named for founder William Bland, is similarly named.^[11][12] The county of Essex in southeastern England is home to the village of Ugley, and the county of Hertfordshire the hamlet of Nasty, which are only a few miles apart.

Swear words, humorous words or highly charged words

The frequently stolen traffic sign at the entrance to the village of Fucking, Austria.^[13]

A number of settlements have names that are offensive or humorous in other languages, such as Fucking, Austria.^[1] Although as a place name Fucking is benign in German, in English the word is a profanity. Similarly, while the town of Condom, France, has no humorous connotations in French, English speakers will likely associate it with condoms, a form of barrier contraception.^[1][14] Hell, Norway, comes from the old Norse word hellir, which means "overhang" or "cliff cave". In modern Norwegian the word for hell is helvete, while "hell" can mean "luck". Conversely, a number of place names can be considered humorous or offensive by their inhabitants, such as the German towns Affendorf (Monkey Village), Faulebutter (Putrid Butter), Fickmühlen (Fuck Mills), Himmelreich (Kingdom of Heaven), Katzenhirn (Cat Brain), Plöd (blöd means stupid, renamed in 2009), Regenmantel (Raincoat) and Warzen (Warts).^[15] The US also has Hell, Michigan; however, it is unincorporated.

Some placenames are deemed to be offensive or unacceptable, often through historic changes in what is tolerated.^[16][17][18] An example of this would be the once common English street name Gropecunt Lane. During the Middle Ages the word cunt may often have been considered merely vulgar, having been in common use in its anatomical sense since at least the 13th century. Its steady disappearance from the English vernacular may have been the result of a gradual cleaning-up of the name; Gropecunt Lane in 13th century Wells became Grope Lane, and then in the 19th century, Grove Lane.^[19] In the city of York, Grapcunt Lane (grāp being the Old English word for grope^[20]) was renamed Grope Lane and is now called Grape Lane.^[21] A similar case was in the town of Sasmuan, Pampanga in the Philippines, where it was formerly known as "Sexmoan" based on attempts by Spanish friars to transcribe "Sasmuan"; it was unanimously changed into Sasmuan in 1991 due to negative sexual connotations associated with the place name.^[22][23]

In Spain, a municipality was named Castrillo Matajudíos ("Jew-killer Camp") from 1627 to 2015.

A number of placenames in the United States historically used the word "nigger", a commonly used if derogatory term for blacks in the 1800s. Over the course of the 20th century, many of these placenames were changed due to the increasingly negative racist connotations of the word. One example is Dead Nigger Creek in Texas (named to commemorate the Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877) which was changed to Dead Negro Draw.^[24] Another is Niggerhead Mountain near Malibu, California which was changed to Negrohead Mountain in the 1960s and finally to Ballard Mountain in 2010 for an early African American settler. ^[25]

Likewise there is pressure to remove the word "squaw", a traditional term for a Native American woman now considered derogatory, from place names, such as the renaming of Squaw Peak in Phoenix, Arizona to Piestewa Peak, after Specialist Lori Ann Piestewa, killed in action during Operation Iraqi Freedom.^[26]

Other name changes

Sometimes settlement names are changed as a publicity stunt or to promote tourism.

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico changed its name from Hot Springs in 1950, after the host of the television show Truth or Consequences promised free publicity to any town willing to change its name to that of the show.^[27]

In 1999, the town of Halfway, Oregon changed its name to Half.com, after the e-commerce start-up of the same name, for one year in exchange for $110,000, 20 computers for the school and other financial subsidies.^[28]

Saint Augusta, Minnesota was for a short time named Ventura, Minnesota after the then-governor Jesse Ventura (whose ring name was in turn named after the city of Ventura, California) to draw attention in avoiding annexation by the nearby city of Saint Cloud.^[29] The name was reverted to the original name after the crisis passed.

Unorthodox spelling or pronunciation

The railway station sign in the town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll­gogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Wales, gives an approximation of the correct pronunciation for English speakers.

Webster, MA USA firefighter's patch with the longest version of "Webster Lake's" name on its circumference.

Unorthodox spelling or pronunciation, short or long names, and names derived from unusual sources are often seen as unusual, especially by people outside the culture which named them. The Welsh village Llanfairpwllgwyngyll­gogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch changed its name in the 1860s from the shorter Llanfairpwllgwyngyll to increase its publicity. At 58 letters, it has the longest place name in the UK.^[30] The body of fresh water in Webster, Massachusetts that has historically (since at least 1921) borne the apparently Native American-origin, 45-letter-long name Lake Chargoggagoggmanch­auggagoggchaubunagungamaugg is usually shortened, for instance on road maps, to Lake Chaubunagungamaug, or even more simply to "Webster Lake". Conversely, there are several settlements whose name consists of only one letter. A number of Scandinavian towns are named Å. The name often comes from the Old Norse word Ár, meaning small river. Examples include: Å, Åfjord; Å, Meldal; Å, Lavangen and Å, Tranøy.^[31] The Netherlands has IJ (Amsterdam), formerly spelled Y.

There are a number of place names that seem unusual to English speakers because they do not conform to standard English orthography rules. Examples include the Welsh towns of Ysbyty Ystwyth and Bwlchgwyn which contain no vowel characters (although y and w represent vowel sounds in Welsh).^[32] Aioi, Japan, Eiao, Marquesas Islands, Aiea, Hawaii^{[note 1]} and Ii, Finland on the other hand, contain only vowels and no consonants.^[33]

Road sign theft

Shitterton, Dorset, England.

Due to increased notoriety, road signs are commonly stolen in Fucking, Austria, as souvenirs^[34] — the only crime which has been reported in the village.^[35] It cost some 300 euros to replace each stolen sign, and the costs were reflected in the taxes that local residents pay.^[36] In 2004, owing mainly to the stolen signs, a vote was held on changing the village's name, but the residents voted against doing so.^[37] Tarsdorf municipality's mayor Siegfried Höppl stated that it was decided to keep the name as it had existed for 800 years,^[37] and further stated that "[e]veryone here knows what it means in English, but for us Fucking is Fucking—and it's going to stay Fucking."^[38]

In 2010, the inhabitants of Shitterton, Dorset, purchased a 1.5-ton block of Purbeck Stone to place at the entrance to Shitterton, carved with the hamlet's name to prevent theft.^[39] A truck and crane were hired by volunteers to put the stone in place, at a total cost of £680.^[39][40]

See also

• List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations
• List of long place names
• List of short place names
• Gag name
• Toponymy, the study of place names
• List of chemical compounds with unusual names
• Kinki University
• Beans and Bacon mine
• Wikipedia:Unusual place names

Notes

References

External links

• University of Calgary press
• CNN news, Odd town names strike author's fancy (1998)
• Odd and Unusual Place Names
• Topeka, Kansas, named Google, Kansas for one month
• List of Weird Place Names
• Rude Hong Kong
• Britain's silliest place names (The Telegraph)