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Hi Rob, here in the good ol' USA, we pronounce the "y" in Zzyzx with a short 'i' sound (as in fit), not a long 'i' sound (as in fight). It sound more like "Zizzicks"... sort of like Physics with a "Z" instead of a "Ph".
Not only does Pennsylvania have both an Intercourse and a Blue Ball, but they're only about 8 miles apart, so it's literally possible to be heading toward Intercourse, make a wrong turn, and end up at Blue Ball.
I live a stone's throw from Blue Ball. If you can't get to Intercourse and you're traveling alone, you could always go to Bird-in-Hand. But if you have a companion, you could stop by Fertility, head towards Intercourse, then continue on to Paradise.
There is also Hel in Poland, they even had a bus line number 666, but some religious extremists forced them to change it. Poland also has at least seven villages named "Piekło", which means "Hell"...
In Alaska, there are about four villages/towns called Moose Pass (only one is an official town). Besides there being about four of them, it's not too funny, but when you are 10 years old and you drive past a gas station with a big sign that says “Moose Pass Gas” it suddenly becomes hilarious.
I'd be inclined to buy the neigbouring properties, then put a sign saying "YES" just before it, then another saying "In case you were wondering" just after it.
I became aware of two odd place names in Illinois USA when a friend sent me a cutting from a small local newspaper in Oblong, a village in Crawford County, Illinois. The short piece (possibly for comedic effect) announced the marriage of a local man and his fiancée from the McClean County town of Normal, also in Illinois. The headline ran "OBLONG MAN MARRIES NORMAL WOMAN". You don't get headlines like that every day (or maybe they do in Normal and Oblong).
Speaking of comedic headlines, there was this football player called Royce Hart, when he lost a tribunal case, the headline was Tribunal Rolls Royce. Even my mum laughed at that.
There's also the headline: 'RV CRASHES INTO BORING TAVERN" because of Boring, Oregon (sister city of Dull and Bland). Which I guess makes it not so boring anymore.
In Hong Kong, there is an odd little street called Rednaxela Terrace. Legend has it that during colonial times, the street was once owned by a Mr Alexander and was originally called Alexander Terrace, but during a street census, the census taker (who spoke Chinese) wrote the letters in "Alexander" from right to left (as would have been standard in Chinese at the time), and the name stuck. This is the only example I can find of a street name being reversed due to a clerical error.
We have a town near where I live that is rumored to the founder's name backward because he didn't want people to think he was too proud. I don't know it the story is true.
Just a little note on Aa and Å: The latter (the letter) is actually placed LAST in the Norwegian alphabet - just after our two other peculiar vowels Æ and Ø - so it does not challenge Aa's place at the alphabetical top of the list. It's pronounced like the English word "awe".
Right! So Aa is still, alphabetically, the first town on this list, while Å (in the Norwegian alphabet, not the English one) comes after Zzyzx. Also, it is kind of interesting that Å and A are on opposite ends of the alphabet. Thanks for the information!
@@receivedpronunciation6696Alternative spelling for the Norwegian letters æ, ø, å is ae, oe, aa respectively. (When the keys are lacking from the keyboard settings.)
@@roygalaasen Yes, but i where told they are not exactly as the Swedish equvivalents. 🙂 In Sweden we have a lot of places named Å or Ö (River and Island).
@@sheep1ewe no, you are probably right. Yes, I know that the Swedish Å and Ö are river and island. It is quite funny. Never actually though about it like that though. 😀
Fun facts; In Norwegian, "Å" sorts last of our alphabet, the end of which is "xyzæøå", so while in English we say "from A to Z" in Norway we say "fra A til Å", making "Å" sort after "ZZYZX". Also, "Å" means "river" as in "Mang en bekk små gjør en stor å" let. "Many streams together make a large river".
@@maxhoffmann6821 Interesting. In German äöü are (most of the time) sorted as ae, oe, ue. Or alternatively after the "root" letter, but very rarely at the end.
Australia has some brilliant ones: Blue Knob and Yorkey's Knob immediately come to mind. And then there's Climax in Canada. Their town limit sign says "Please come again". Very nice of them.
South of Ingå in southern Finland there is a small island (max width and max length both just over 60 meters) called Hela världen, which means "the whole world" in Swedish. A megalomaniac tiny island.
Many hills and small lakes in Northern Finland have very obscene names. When Finland was ruled by tsarist Russia in the 19th century Russian land surveyors arrived to map out the country, and the locals basically trolled them by making up dirty names in Finnish.
I live in Truth or Consequences, NM. The locals call it T or C for short. The school district refused to change their name, so kids around here still attend Hot Springs High School. A section of town was so upset about the name change that they broke off from the city and became the village of Williamsburg.
Had an important role in a Doctor Who story (12th Doctor) where a lot of inhabitants got killed by invading aliens from a special protection program...
@@LisaBeta-42I literally just watched that ep for the first time a couple days ago! At first I didn’t believe it was a real place… then I remembered it’s America… and so it was too weird as to be fake lmao
In Ecuador we have a large number of bizarre village names, including El Placer del Culo (The Pleasure of the Butthole), Pueblo Arrecho (Badass Town, or Horny Town), Muerto Parado (Dead Man Standing) and Come y Paga (Eat and Pay), all of which are in one single province, Manabí, famous for strange personal names and place names. A common place name in Spanish-speaking countries is Salsipuedes (meaning "get out if you can"), and of course there's one in Manabí as well.
I knew about Salsipuedes in Chile but didn't know they were in other places, as well. My husband also talks about Peor Es Nada in Chile, which means "Nothing is Worse."
I think Dull twinning with Boring and Bland deserves a special prize. As for the Welsh town with the long name, I think they inadvertently used as name the instructions to reach and recognise the place... "Tell me, John, how do I reach that place you mentioned yesterday?" "I'll write you a note, James, it's easier"
those Welsh names could actually have been a clever way to navigate to the places in times where no other navigation existed... "first go to the-little-swampy-lake-close-to-the-big-oak-tree, and from there on, you can see the-village-with-the-white-painted-church, after which you will come to Saint-Marys-Church-in-the-Hollow-of-the-white-Hazel-near-to-the-rapid-whirlpool-of-Llantisilio-of-the-red-cave". But if you end up in the-summit-where-Tamatea,-the-man-with-the-big-knees,-the-climber-of-mountains,-the-land-swallower-who-travelled-about,-played-his-nose-flute-to-his-loved-one (Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu), you took the wrong turn - because this is in New Zealand. And because most people were not capable of reading and writing these days, the spelling of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was at anyone's guess 😁 (joking, of course - according to Wikipedia, it was probably a stunt to attract tourists).
I remember my dad telling me a story from the 80s, when he lived in Arizona, about an almost abandoned town on the route he took to Las Vegas. The towns name was “Nothing” and had a population of only a few people at the time (now everyone is gone). The best part about the town is that the self-proclaimed mayors name was Les Payne. I know nobody will see this comment but I just wanted to archive the funny town name Nothing’s past.
You've reminded me of a story I heard many years ago. I'm not sure if it is true or not but it's one of those stories that *should* be true. Apparently, there is a tombstone somewhere in the American West that commemorates a man who fell in a gunfight: "Here lies the body of Les Moore, killed by five bullets. No less, no more."
Intrigued by your comment I googled a bit. There is a nice short clip here on UA-cam wen you search Nothing Arizona. You will see Les Payne and the store. The mayor was either self proclaimed or given 100 dollar for his name to be used as "mayor", in reality the place had no.
@@Frank-Lee-Speeking The correct epitaph is "Here lies Lester Moore, killt with 2 bullets from a .44. No Les, no more." IIRC, it's from Boot Hill, Abilene, Kansas...
You clearly meant, “number of puns”. An amount of puns would be a pile of ground up puns ready for weighing. (Oh, my poor language! What have they done to you? I will go down fighting to the very end.)
𝗦𝗲𝘅𝗺𝗼𝗮𝗻, 𝖯𝗁𝗂𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗉𝗂𝗇𝖾𝗌 Sexmoan was changed to Sasmuan on January 15, 1991, under the Republic Act No. 6976. The name Sexmoan was derived from the ancient Kapampangan root word "sasmo," which means "to meet". The town was known as Sexmoan until 1991 when the spelling was unanimously changed. The change was made to avoid the negative connotation of the name and to reflect the town's true history.
The one that always makes me laugh is: In Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, there’s a road called Dick Ward Drive that enters into Fannie Bay. ‘Fannie’ means something very different in Australia than it does in America.
In Santa Fe, Argentina, there is a town called «Venado Tuerto», which translates into "One-eyed Deer". In La Pampa there's a town called «Carro Quemado», "Burnt Cart" And in Córdoba there's a town named «Salsipuedes», literally "GetOutIfYouCan".
Recently I heard that the village of Fucking, Austria, replaced the normal metal plate road sign at the entrance of the village with one made of concrete that weighs a ton, because tourists kept stealing the old one time and time again.
It's even worse: Things got to the point where in 2021 they changed the spelling to "Fugging", just so people would stop. I don't know if it helped though. Also: Beers are often named after the town they originated from (e.g. Pilsner from Pilsen in Czechia). Also, a type of german lager is called "Helles" (often shortened to "Hell") for its light color. "Fucking Hell", a beer named after a town it is not brewed in and a type that it is technically not.
@YieldOnly Well, it did help, sort of. Initially, the new signs were spray painted over so they read "Fucking" after all. But that seems to have been a onetime occurrence.
@@rstrassburg The houses in former Fuggerei built the first sheltered housing in the worls. However, the House of Fugger was so rich that they could buy whole towns or influence kings when they have conflict with the family or with other kings, dukes.
One of my favorites is the town of Peculiar, Missouri. The story is that the postmaster couldn't find a name acceptable to the postmaster general, so he wrote, "We don't care what name you give us so long as it is sort of peculiar." I used to vacation in a cabin in the woods just a little past the town. We called the cabin "Beyond Peculiar."
I see somebody beat me to Peculiar, so here's some more interesting place names in Missouri. Under the heading of "named after another city" there's Versailles (pronounced verSAILS) and New Madrid (new MADrid) When some settlers from Raleigh, North Carolina were looking to name their new town they didn't want the same thing to happen to them, so they spelled it so it would be pronounced "correctly": Rolla.
@@ptorq Not to mention Nevada (neVAHda), and Missouri itself (as missURuh) depending where you are at. Also in my odyessy for stupidity, I found Yukon in Texas (County). It's near Houston. (In Texas county.) Across the river there's Alhambra, which most pronounce (alHAmbra) but is actually (alHAMbra).
In Ireland,we have funny placenames such as Kilmacow, Mooncoin, Leap, Cork, Pilltown, Porridgetown, Kill, Trim, Kilkenny,Mallow, Hospital, Effin,and many more
It's in the panhandle,isn't it? So is Two Egg. I'm from Lakeland, but the furthest I have been away is St. Augustine and Perry. I always heard the panhandle was nice.
Chilean native here. We have our fair share of weird town names. Peor Es Nada ( It's Worse To Own Nothing) in the 7h Region. The story is that a landowner died and left most of his estate to his sons and only a small part to her only daughter. The lady shrugged her shoulders and said the phrase before and so the town got is name. Another example is Las Coimas ( literally The Bribes), a little town in the Valparaiso region which took its name after a local Customs post that operated there. Being an isolated post it's easy to assume that the customs officers had some dubious practices when checking baggage. And there's also Purgatory, a small town near the Nahuelbuta range, named like that because going into and out of the place is extremely difficult due to the conditions of the road. Very funny video, by the way, Rob.
You probably could have made a video like this just about Newfoudland... so many funny place names there. From Tickle Cove to Come By Chance, from Virgin Cove to Conception Bay and Happy Valley. Newfoundland is one happy place. :)
I once met a woman from Slapout, Alabama. She said there was once a single store in that crossroads village, and it was never well stocked. Whatever you asked for, you were likely to hear the clerk say he was "Slap out of it." In American Southernese "slap out" roughly translates to "completely out."
@@matthewgrumbling4993 Met a woman from Slapout in 'Bama She said with a bit of a stammer "In this state by the sea, We've got family trees Such that my sister's my gramma"
Thank you for the video! I would appreciate a second part. From the top of my head I know two weird German village names: Linsengericht ("Lentil Dish") and Deppendorf ("Moron's Village")
I've been through Dusseldorf on a train but I've always wondered what the "Dussel" part meant. In my mother's dialect of German - she grew up in Schleswig - a "dussel" (not sure about the spelling) is an idiot but I'm having trouble believing a major city name translates as "idiots town". Then again, given the other examples in this town, I suppose anything is possible.
So here in Germany we have a few ones, too. Ostereistedt, Hymendorf. Drangstedt and Flögeln close to each other north of Rotenburg (Wümme), translating to Easter Egg Town (if you pronounce it slightly wrong), Hymen Village, Urge Town and let's say Blonk or Fluck. Büchsenschinken near Reinbek - Canned Ham. Lederhose near Gera, Leather Trousers. Regenmantel near Seelow, Rain Coat. Oberkaka and Unterkaka near Zeitz, Upper and Lower Poo-Poo. Petting near Traunstein, well, Petting. Poing near München (or Munich if you so wish), which you could decipher as a word for Mooning in a German-English neologism. Wixhausen, roughly Wank Houses, which is a part of Darmstadt, Colon City. Kotzen near Rathenow, To-Vooomit (due to the long o the name has instead of the short one in the verb) Pissen near Leipzig, To-Piss and finally Hackpfüffel, which does not translate to anywhere, but sounds like a comic writer needed a funny word. Additional Amerika, Texas, Brasilien, Kalifornien and the like, but they don't qualify as funny, I guess. In Austria there was the village Fucking (the u pronounced with the sound from look, not with that from fuck), but after years of getting the city limit signs stolen they decided to now go by the name of Fugging.
ich möchte hinzufügen: Geilsdorf (zip: 08538) -> geil (eng. horny) and dorf (engl. village) Tuntenhausen (close to Freising, close to Munich) -> "Tunte" is a very unfriendly word in german for a male gay person (adding the n means just plural) and hausen (eng.home) Tittenkoofen (zip code: 85447) -> i guess u english native speakers could guess what "Titten" might means. correct, it's tits. And koofen doesn't exist in modern day german but it sounds in some dialects like "kaufen" (eng. buy) In the Czech Republic: Kuttenplan (cz: Chodová Planá, zip: 348 15) -> Kutten (eng.: cowls) and plan is also in english plan
No mention of Pant-y-wacco, Wales? Perhaps in the next video. (Please make more of these-- if playing GeoGuessr has taught me nothing else, it's that there are more ridiculous placenames in the world than we thought.)
Rob, please do consider Chicken Alaska. It is a small town with a very strange name origin story. Nearby is Eagle Alaska. So this town wanted to name itself after an Alaskan bird too. So they chose the ptarmigan. But no one could agree on how to spell it. So someone finally just said "Let's just call it chicken and be done with it." And that sounded like a reasonable solution to them.
There is a town in New York state called Fishkill. The name comes from the Dutch as "vis kill", and in their language it means "fish creek." But this didn't stop PETA members from petitioning the town council to rename it "Fishsafe."
In modern Dutch kill certainly doesn’t mean creek. Do you have a reference on the origin of the name? I wonder if it’s some bastardization of some old Dutch word.
I used to live in Slaughterville, OK (Named for a founding member) and PETA once tried to get them to change their name to "Veggieville" in exchange for free vegetarian meals for the school...which Slaughterville doesn't have, because Slaughterville is nothing more than 2 dozen mobile homes and a giant, fantastically creepy bug sculpture made from an old VW Beetle.
As a software engineer, I once had business in Fishkill. There was (is?) a sprawling IBM facility there that was basically its own town, complete with a modern Fire Department.
In Tuscany, Italy there are two small towns near one another, one called Pesciamorta - the name meaning 'dead fish' in Italian, and Femminamorta, meaning 'dead woman' - both are lovely places 🙂
I live in a city called Coquitlam, which is from an indigenous place-name meaning "place where the fish stink." There's a bend in the river where the dead salmon from the spawning would build up.
I live in Oregon. The highway sign to Boring also shows that you can get to Oregon City on the same route, thus, if you're driving you'll see a sign for "Boring Oregon City", which I always found funny.
Rob, great stuff as always! Let me do something of a Texas boast: I think we have more funny names of towns than anywhere else. Witness: Oatmeal, Gravy, Matador, Bacon, Noodle, Noodle Dome, Heckville, Finney Switch, Happy Union, New Deal, Ding-Dong, Jot-Em-Down, Cut and Shoot, Bigfoot, Gun Barrel City, Bug Tussle, Frognot, Dimebox, Uncertain, and, of course, our own Nameless. In addition, you can travel the world and not leave Texas. Here's your itinerary: Athens, Naples, Geneva, Paris, Moscow, and closer to home: Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Newcastle, and--why not?--London.
Fun fact: Monster in Dutch is exactly the same as in English, so here, we find it a funny place name as well. In addition to Monster, we also have Goor (disgusting) en Sexbierum (bier means beer).
There's Mexican Hat, Utah, named after a local geologic formation. And the ghost town of Mosquito, Colorado. The townsfolks (miners) were meeting, attempting to come up with a name for their settlement. Before they could come up with one, the called the end of the meeting, When the next met, the opened up the minutes of the previous meeting and found a mosquito squashed between the pages, and they adopted that as the name of their town, the creek flowing past it, the mining district, and the pass between them and Leadville (named for the lead that was getting hung up in their sluices while gold mining, later to be found full of silver).
I have been to Mexican Hat. Very very small town. They have a motel in a canyon that me and my family stayed in. There is another ghost town in Colorado named Tomboy. Not far from another town my family went to.
In Denmark we have a town called Sæd (Semen) and Tarm (Intestine). Recently there was an accident in Tarm involving manure leaking from a silo, giving the colourful title of an article "Gylle-drama i Tarm" (Manure drama in Tarm).
In France there’s a famous town named Montcuq ! It is heard as « Mon cul » which can be translated as « my ass », so there’s tons and tons of jokes that have been done around its name !
So happy to hear someone finally mention Cocking. I went to school in Cocking, Cocking Primary School to be exact although it is no longer there, demolished many years ago to make way for houses. Living in the area near Cocking, over the years, many signposts were graffited or even stolen. On a recent trip home to visit my mother, I noticed that they have now removed Cocking from the signpost (probably to save money replacing it). However, I never lived in Cocking. I grew up 3 miles away from Cocking in a tiny little hamlet called... Didling. I now live in Scotland, about 20 miles from Dull
I can't speak for the city of Monster, but there's a historical example here in Washington state for "Monster" as a Surname. Renton, WA has a "Monster Road" named for the Monster family of settlers. If you search for "Baby Monster Grave" you'll find the headstone of "Baby Monster" from the cemetery in Kent, WA where the Monster family is buried.
Hi ! Apparently, as for Münster (germany), it could come from the name "Monastery" I didnt know some people were named "monster", thats a strange surname !
According to (the Dutch) Wikipedia, the origin of the name of the town Monster is unclear. It may have come from the latin name for cloister/monastery - monasterium - but there was no monastery there, only a large church. It was also a place of pilgrimage. The settlement originated in the tenth century CE. Apparently, an older name for the place was Masamuda, which would have meant Mouth of the (river) Maas. The word "monster" in modern Dutch means both a "sample" and, just as in English, a grotesque being.
There's a small borough in the outskirts of Stockholm named Pungpinan, which translates as "The Scrotum Pain". The reason is that historically the word that today is primarily used for scrotum in Swedish was historically used for coin purses and there was supposedly a particularly expensive inn there.
Speaking of odd place name origins, there's a small in town in West Virginia that used to be called Molehill. I wish I knew the origin of that name, but I don't. It's probably an interesting story. Anyhow, in the 1930's, someone started a campaign to change the town's name because they claimed they thought it sounded stupid. They finally convinced enough people to approve the change, and the ceremony where the change was officially made legal was broadcast on the radio. The town's name was changed to Mountain. At the end of the ceremony, someone said over the radio, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, we've made a mountain out of a molehill."
I have feeling that most of people wanted name change to make fool of original complainer; wish that someone would have filmed their face after that pun 🤣
A Danish one that sounds funny in English, is Middelfart. It means Middle Journey and refers to it being half way on a travel from one end of the country to the other. Fart means journey, speed, travel, and is also used in "fartkontrol": Speed control.
I don't live far away from Rude. As a Brit in Denmark, I found in rather amusing the first time I saw it - it had never occurred to my Danish wife what it said 😁
@DannyMonaghan69 I once did business with a Czech man called Pik. It was so awkward. 😬 His full name was Pikous, and I said that I felt more comfortable being formal and using his full name. If I hadn't, I would have giggled like a 12-year-old. I didn't tell him the truth.
Denmark has a lot of place names that sound ridicolous - either because they actually mean something funny, or because they just have a dirty ring to them. Pictures of Danish direction signs used to be classic internet humour in Norway before memes were a thing.
Thanks for the mention of Ugley near where I grew up - and yes, there really is (or was 50 years ago) "The Ugley Women's Institute!" It's not that far from Six Mile Bottom, but you plumbed the depths of that joke with much better examples ...
@@smoker_joe May be related?! I looked up the etymology for "Å" (Norwegian, small river/stream). Turns out back in the day it was spelled... Aa/aa. Root is norse: Á Then i found that a protonorse word for water is "Ahva". Possibly related. Update, found some more: "Ahva" is suspiciously similar to "Aqua". The are related! Proto germanic "akhwo". (hard to say which came first). BUT!!! There is an old English word for river, related, "Ea". HAh! It is basically the same word! "Å" - "Ea". Trivia: Å would mean "any river". If you are referencing a specific river it would be åa or åen (adding a or en to the ending., "a" ending if the dialect consider river to be female or "en" if the dialect consider it to be male).
You should do more. You could create a whole series on this topic, so many places come to mind. Tarzana California, which is named after Tarzan who is a character in a book, Lake Titicaca, and so many examples already in the comments.
The state of Arizona has quite a few oddly named places such as: Why, Carefree, Nothing, Christmas, Three Way, Strawberry, Dragoon, Surprise, Mexican Water, Top-Of-The-World, So-Hi, Show Low, Santa Claus, Snowflake, Wagon Wheel, Love, Avenue B and C (just one city, not two).
There's also-- Tuba City, Mammoth, Many Farms, Klondyke, Coffee Pot, Beaver Dam, Ash Fork, Mexican Water, Blue Gap, Round Rock, and Rough Rock. Other than Tuba City and a couple others, I have no idea how populated they are. In New Mexico, there's Elephant Butte, too, though a Butte is a real landmark. You can find a lot of weird towns just by surfing Google Maps lol
Another great video, Rob, and thanks for taking the time to amuse us. There does, however, appear to be a glaring omission! Where was Twatt, in Orkney? 😲
In Pennsylvania, they have both Intercourse and Blue Ball, which are right by each other! Blue Ball was named after the Blue Ball Hotel, built more than two hundred years ago, which was torn down in 1997. In the early 18th century, John Wallace built a small building in Earl Town (the place's original name) and hung a blue ball out front from a post and called it "The Sign of the Blue Ball". Thus, the locals started calling the town that. Intercourse on the other hand was formerly known as Cross Keys, named after a local tavern. Intercourse became the name in 1814. How? Well there is no clear story but there are a couple theories. One suggests it is derived from a sign at an old racecourse on the edge of town which said "Enter course". Another says it's for two big roads that crossed there. The Old King's highway from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh (now the Old Philadelphia Pike) ran east and west through the center of the town. The road from Wilmington to Erie intersected in the middle. The joining of these two roads is claimed by some to be the basis for the town.
Australia has its own set of weird, if not wonderful place names. There are too many to list but these, need special mention. Come By Chance, Wee Waa, Useless Loop, Running Jump Creek, Scented knob, Chinamans knob, Bong Bong, Greg Greg, Big Dick Bore, Linger and die Creek and the longest name in Australia, Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill in South Australia. It's a word from the local Pitjantjatjara language that means, “where the devil urinates”.
I was sent to Sydney to do penance at IBM. I worked with a fellah named Buddy, whose wife was named Dee. One saturday they took me on a drive and passed a sign pointing to DEE WHY. I asked Buddy if that's what he says to his wife when she wants him to do a job or two adound the house.
There is a farm in South Africa named: Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein. It means "Two buffaloes killed with one shot, fountain". Also strange that in South Africa, there are a multitude of places named after a fountain, without there being any noticeable fountains in the area.
In Afrikaans 'fountain' does mean spring - i.e. a place where underground water comes to the surface. In a water-stressed country, you tend to get obsessed with such things.
And in South Africa (in case I missed it) Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, which is actually a farm and is the 4th longest place name in the world. It means "the spring where two buffaloes were killed with a single shot.
Please do more of these Rob as you truly outdid yourself on this one. Superb job. :-) This is good and near Benny Hill level entertainment. :-) RIP Mr. Hill.
Very close to where I live in Southland, New Zealand there is a charming rural settlement called Mabel’s Bush. I have to admit I giggle whenever I drive past the sign.
It may be interesting to do a video on spam/game/etc. filters with the Scunthorpe problem and the related buttbuttin problem. The second one is due to replacing rude words with less rude ones in game chat/etc. for hilarity when playing as an assassin.
There are also several parts of Melbourne Australia named "Batman", and the city itself was almost named "Batmania" after the founding figure of John Batman. I remember meeting a woman who had recently arrived from the UK, and it just happened to be in the middle of an election campaign. There were signs all over the part of town she was staying in with pictures of candidates as "Greens for Batman" or "Liberal for Batman", "Your local Independent for the community of Batman". She was utterly bemused as to why politicians were advertising themselves as advocates of a super hero, until I explained that the electorate was actually named after John Batman.
Although we do pronounce it differently to the superhero. We pronounce it more like Batmin, with the "i" barely being pronounced. My suburb, Coburg, in northern Melbourne, shares the same postcode as Batman. I've had a few puzzled looks from check-in staff at foreign hotels when they have checked my postcode and had it come up with Batman (since "b" comes before "c").
I live in a wine producing area of Spain- Ribeira Sacra (hence my channel name) There is a village called Sober. it is produced slightly differently in Spanish to English. But still it is worth a photo opportunity.
Surprised you didn’t cover the German-Austrian cycle ride from Kissing-München-Petting-Titmoning and on to the town that’s now called Fugging (as the locals got fed up replacing the sign containing “ck”)! 😂
Here in Australia there are loads of odd place names. Two that spring to mind without me thinking too hard are Worlds End and Goodnight. There's also Colignan, not an odd name per se, but the town of Nangiloc (which is Colignan backwards) is about 6 miles away as the crow flies. Yeah, no body part inferences in those ones, sorry
We have a Goodnight in Missouri, USA, too! There's a mountain of weird names here. I could list about 40, and not even scratch the surface. Like Pilot Knob, Knob Noster, Knob Lick, Licking, and Toad Hollow, to name a few. 😂
Definitely do more!! In Brazil we have a few cities with funny names: "Não-Me-Toque" (literally "do not touch me"), "Venha Ver" ("come and see"), "Passa e Fica" ("pass it by and stay"), "Paudalho" ("garlic stick", but in Brazilian slang it could be "garlic penis"), "Carrasco Bonito" ("pretty executioner").
Here in NY, we have our fair share of weird names. Like Coxsackie! No, it's not what you're thinking. It's supposed to be pronounced cook-sock-ee. The name from the Algonquin word mak-kachs-hack-ing. When the land was purchased by the Dutch settlers, the name was written as Koxhackung. It is generally translated as "Hoot-owl place" or "place of many owls". Or Chili! Despite the way it's spelled, it was named in honor of Chile. But it's not pronounced like Chile either, it's instead pronounced as CHY-lye. There's also Mexico! It's both the name of a village and the name of the township the village is in. The first Mexico (a proposed county), with all the surrounding towns, was originally created from Town of Whitestown, Oneida County in April 1792 The original organization of the proposed Mexico County and a town of that name was abandoned for a time. In December 1794, German-born George Frederick William Augustus Scriba purchased and patented a large tract of land, subsequently becoming a second Mexico, hence the Village of Mexico and the Town of Mexico. George named it Mexico because he had a special interest in Central America. It was renamed to Vera Cruz for a bit as George Scriba hoped that the City of Mexico (or Vera Cruz), now town of Mexico, would grow to become a grand port city on Lake Ontario that the world would envy.
The Dutch place names of the Hudson Valley create all manner of weirdness and weird pronunciations. "Fishkill" named after the Fishkill Creek. But "kill" is an old Dutch word for "creek". So, "Fish Creek Creek." And then there's "Valatie", which is pronounced something like, "Valayshia".
Sorry, but I need to correct both Rob and yourself. Muff is not in Northern Ireland as you said. It is in Ulster. Co Donegal and part of the Republic of Ireland, and very not British.
Love your videos - I grew up near Nasty in Puckeridge, so was a shock watching the video to see my childhood village come up (the meaning of which I'm told is Fairy under the Bridge). Saw two other villages with interesting pronunciations and possibly etymologies near Nasty - Braughing (pronounced Braffing), and Haultwick (pronounced Artic) - is this something you could shed light on, or is there a resource I can look up to find the origins?
Okay @robwords, looks like you need to take a trip to Newfoundland and parse the entomology of their unique way of speaking. Have some screech while you're there
More, more, more, please! I'm originally from New York City and a linguist. I've lived near some strangely named places. Right now, I live in Pennsylvania which contains "Blue Ball". That town is not too terribly far away from "Intercourse". Unfortunately, as you alluded to in this video, "the colonies" are rife with odd place names. There's a "Reader's Digest, New York". There's also one in New Mexico. I know the stories surrounding both of those and I'll go into detail, if you like, but I hate typing. So, I'll end this for now. Keep up the good work, Rob. I find most of your videos to be extremely entertaining.
In Quebec, there was a govt minister named Lise Bacon (French). After one kerfuffle, the anglo newspaper's headline was "Bacon Sizzles". They couldn't resist, who could? but she was furious.
My native state of North Carolina, USA, has a few oddly named towns. There's Lizard Lick, Whynot, and Scotland Neck. A couple of mildly suggestive places are Apex and Climax. There's also Cumnock. I'm sure the stories behind some of these odd names would be interesting. I really enjoy your videos!!! Greetings from Virginia, USA.
I remember reading about town names in the US that were named during the western expansion through the 1800's and later had their names changed by official government rules, because the names were found to be unacceptable. I only remember a few of them: Bullshit Springs was changed to Bullshirt Springs (which isn't much of an improvement), and Whorehouse Meadows was changed to Naughty Girl Meadows. I also heard that Nome, Alaska was named by mistake. As sailors were charting out the Alaskan coast, they saw the settlement and didn't know what its name was, so someone wrote "Name?" on the map, and the person's handwriting was misread as "Nome". After mentioning Llanfair..., I'm surprised you didn't mention Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, commonly known as "Lake Gog". The name comes from an old native land treaty between two tribes, and means, "We fish on our side, you fish on your side, nobody fishes in the middle." Zzyzx Road is usually pronounced to rhyme with "physics". I've driven past it many times. It's off of Interstate 15, that goes from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Everyone who's ever driven to Vegas from southern California has seen the Zzyzx Road sign.
And I also learned about a place called Just Enough Room Island - the smallest inhabited island in the world. 3300 square feet, or about 1/13 of an acre. Originally called "Hub Island", someone bought it, and built his house on it. I suppose he has the right to rename it, if he owns it. One house, one tree, a few shrubs, a little bit of beach.
@@w.reidripley1968 Yes. Apparently, that's what the guy who came up with the name intended. It doesn't follow the usual rules of pronunciation. Not having a second vowel, there's nothing to indicate a long vowel sound, and therefore a short vowel sound would usually be indicated. For example "gym" and "rhythm" as opposed to "lyre" and "xylophone".
I'm a few seconds in, and stopped to predict if Chinaman's Knob will feature in this video; placename to, not one nor two, but to _three_ different locations in Australia.
There's a lot of funny place name in Japanese for us Mandarin speakers, since Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi has tons of linguistic false friend, ranging from slightly weird to nonsense. One of the more famous one, is a place in near Tokyo call Abiko 我孫子 it's just a normal place name in Japanese but it mean 'my grandson' in Mandarin, apparently we also got omachi machi 大町町 it mean 'big town' town in both language, But, in Mandarin the character 町 has the same pronunciation as 丁 and make the name sound like 大丁丁 which is one of the way of implying big PP.
In addition to Nameless (which I didn’t know about despite living in Tennessee my entire life), we also have: Sweet Lips Finger Three Way Dancyville Blue Goose Goat City Friendship not one but TWO places called Frog Jump (like the two “Twatts” mentioned by some other commenters) Hicksville Only Bucksnort Stinking Creek Wartburg Nankipoo Bugtussle
I just can't stop laughing! And your delivery is spot on, Rob! Some of those "Bottoms" were totally new to me.. 🤦🏻♀️ At least Dull is now twinned with Boring and Bland! 🤣 If I still lived in the UK I'd be laughing over my fish 'n' chips.. (I miss them too! 😂) Thanks for a brilliant vid.. 👏
Dull, boring and bland should be twinned with some of austrian places called "Oed" (which means kind of boring, originally an expression for a barren or deserted area)
Where I live, there are these two streets that used to be named "This Street" and "That Street". My dad almost lost his job for telling his boss that he was "at the corner of This Street and That Street". Boss got mad, yelled at dad over the radio, and jumped in his truck. When he got there, there was dad leaning on the street sign at the intersection of This Street and That Street. Sadly, the streets have since been renamed. What town, you ask? It's a town called Pinetop-Lakeside. The Lakeside part is obvious (it was started on the side of a lake). The Pinetop part... you'd THINK it was named after the local pine trees but nope. It was named after a red headed bartender. But even if where the name came from isn't intuitive, it's not weird enough to end up on a "weird place name list" like neighboring Show Low does (named after the winning hand in a card game). But Show Low's got nothing on Why, which was named after... no, not a question... a fork in the road.
The Zzyzx Road thing is more interesting. The guy who made up the name was a snake oil salesman who set up this mineral bath center at the end of the road. It's now abandoned.
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There's also condom and brest 😂
Never heard of Sexbeerum? It's in Frysland i believe.
Å comes last in the alphabet, så Aa would still be first on the list. ;)
Fan y Big is correctly pronounced phonetically as 'VAN ER BE-EG' in Welsh, alas not so funny now Rob 😁
Hi Rob, here in the good ol' USA, we pronounce the "y" in Zzyzx with a short 'i' sound (as in fit), not a long 'i' sound (as in fight). It sound more like "Zizzicks"... sort of like Physics with a "Z" instead of a "Ph".
Not only does Pennsylvania have both an Intercourse and a Blue Ball, but they're only about 8 miles apart, so it's literally possible to be heading toward Intercourse, make a wrong turn, and end up at Blue Ball.
Glorious
I'm here to represent all 302 residents of beautiful Hop Bottom, Pennsylvania
I live a stone's throw from Blue Ball. If you can't get to Intercourse and you're traveling alone, you could always go to Bird-in-Hand. But if you have a companion, you could stop by Fertility, head towards Intercourse, then continue on to Paradise.
It is also true that Paradise pennsylvania is about the same distance from Intercourse, in the other direction.
@@rightasrainevelynj.willbur797 Does that mean the true journey should be from Blue Ball through Intercourse to Paradise?
"... than if you're in Clit, Romania, for example, assuming you've been able to find the place." Best line in the whole video by far.
Perhaps they should sister city with Climax Michigan.
i nearly choked on my ice cream when he said that😭
@@TheFirstGhirnIf you can't find Clit, you'll never reach Climax
Funny that clit is a normal word in Scots meaning the toe on a cow's foot - hence the cause of lameness in cattle called clit-ill.
I was going to Like that comment, but it had 69 likes already...
I grew up close to Hell in Norway. It is surprising how often it freezes over.
There's also a Hell in Michigan as well.
@@michaelbuley3373and in California ….
@@michaelbuley3373 I've seen the highway sign with the icycles on it. LOL.
There is also Hel in Poland, they even had a bus line number 666, but some religious extremists forced them to change it. Poland also has at least seven villages named "Piekło", which means "Hell"...
I'm not sure how often the one in California freezes over. If it's in the mountains, it might freeze over.
In Alaska, there are about four villages/towns called Moose Pass (only one is an official town). Besides there being about four of them, it's not too funny, but when you are 10 years old and you drive past a gas station with a big sign that says “Moose Pass Gas” it suddenly becomes hilarious.
I'd be inclined to buy the neigbouring properties, then put a sign saying "YES" just before it, then another saying "In case you were wondering" just after it.
I became aware of two odd place names in Illinois USA when a friend sent me a cutting from a small local newspaper in Oblong, a village in Crawford County, Illinois. The short piece (possibly for comedic effect) announced the marriage of a local man and his fiancée from the McClean County town of Normal, also in Illinois. The headline ran "OBLONG MAN MARRIES NORMAL WOMAN". You don't get headlines like that every day (or maybe they do in Normal and Oblong).
Speaking of comedic headlines, there was this football player called Royce Hart, when he lost a tribunal case, the headline was Tribunal Rolls Royce. Even my mum laughed at that.
There's also the headline: 'RV CRASHES INTO BORING TAVERN" because of Boring, Oregon (sister city of Dull and Bland). Which I guess makes it not so boring anymore.
hilarious!!
It will take you 42 hrs to drive from blue ball through intercourse to Climax, Oregon. You’ll be tired.
In Hong Kong, there is an odd little street called Rednaxela Terrace. Legend has it that during colonial times, the street was once owned by a Mr Alexander and was originally called Alexander Terrace, but during a street census, the census taker (who spoke Chinese) wrote the letters in "Alexander" from right to left (as would have been standard in Chinese at the time), and the name stuck. This is the only example I can find of a street name being reversed due to a clerical error.
awesome
We have a town near where I live that is rumored to the founder's name backward because he didn't want people to think he was too proud. I don't know it the story is true.
But he didn't miswrite "Terrace" as "Ecarret" and record the name as ECARRET REDNAXELA. So, let's demote this legend to the status of myth.
Brilliant! A quirky outcome to a clerical error! 🤭
@@MisterHowzat Maybe it was supposed to be Redneck Cellar. Or seller?
Just a little note on Aa and Å: The latter (the letter) is actually placed LAST in the Norwegian alphabet - just after our two other peculiar vowels Æ and Ø - so it does not challenge Aa's place at the alphabetical top of the list. It's pronounced like the English word "awe".
Right! So Aa is still, alphabetically, the first town on this list, while Å (in the Norwegian alphabet, not the English one) comes after Zzyzx. Also, it is kind of interesting that Å and A are on opposite ends of the alphabet.
Thanks for the information!
DANISH
Old Spelling: ä, ö, aa
New Spelling: æ, ø, å
GERMAN
Standard Spelling: ä, ö, ü, ß
Alternatives when not found in keyboard: ae, oe, ue, sz/ss
@@receivedpronunciation6696Alternative spelling for the Norwegian letters æ, ø, å is ae, oe, aa respectively. (When the keys are lacking from the keyboard settings.)
@@roygalaasen Yes, but i where told they are not exactly as the Swedish equvivalents. 🙂 In Sweden we have a lot of places named Å or Ö (River and Island).
@@sheep1ewe no, you are probably right. Yes, I know that the Swedish Å and Ö are river and island. It is quite funny. Never actually though about it like that though. 😀
Fun facts; In Norwegian, "Å" sorts last of our alphabet, the end of which is "xyzæøå", so while in English we say "from A to Z" in Norway we say "fra A til Å", making "Å" sort after "ZZYZX". Also, "Å" means "river" as in "Mang en bekk små gjør en stor å" let. "Many streams together make a large river".
Eh?
In Swedish, åäö follow xyz in the alphabet, so Ön just west of Stockholm would certainly place well behind that Zz place in California.
@@maxhoffmann6821 Interesting. In German äöü are (most of the time) sorted as ae, oe, ue. Or alternatively after the "root" letter, but very rarely at the end.
Aa and Ach are common river names in central Europe as well.
Norwegian: Mange bekker små gjør en stor å.
Australia has some brilliant ones: Blue Knob and Yorkey's Knob immediately come to mind.
And then there's Climax in Canada. Their town limit sign says "Please come again". Very nice of them.
There's also a Big Knob on the north coast of NSW.
Inaloo and Cockburn in WA 😆
Is there a Bald Knob, like in West Virginia?
In Victoria we have Mywee, Weerite and at the other side of the state Poowong
There is a place in Tasmania called Nowhere Else.
South of Ingå in southern Finland there is a small island (max width and max length both just over 60 meters) called Hela världen, which means "the whole world" in Swedish. A megalomaniac tiny island.
and in norway there are a town named hell. we in saxony have the town Oberhäßlich, wilsdruff, Poppengrün .
Many hills and small lakes in Northern Finland have very obscene names. When Finland was ruled by tsarist Russia in the 19th century Russian land surveyors arrived to map out the country, and the locals basically trolled them by making up dirty names in Finnish.
Hahaha, that’s great! 😂
Love that they kept the joke names after all this time!
That's quite a hilarious name to insult the land surveyors, and by extension, the Russian Empire!
Thanks for the information!
My favorite Finnish place name is Vittusaari.
@@SOBIESKI_freedom Meaning what?
I live in Truth or Consequences, NM. The locals call it T or C for short. The school district refused to change their name, so kids around here still attend Hot Springs High School. A section of town was so upset about the name change that they broke off from the city and became the village of Williamsburg.
Yes been through there
Had an important role in a Doctor Who story (12th Doctor) where a lot of inhabitants got killed by invading aliens from a special protection program...
T&C ... the name of a new tv channel. 😂
@@LisaBeta-42I literally just watched that ep for the first time a couple days ago! At first I didn’t believe it was a real place… then I remembered it’s America… and so it was too weird as to be fake lmao
In Ecuador we have a large number of bizarre village names, including El Placer del Culo (The Pleasure of the Butthole), Pueblo Arrecho (Badass Town, or Horny Town), Muerto Parado (Dead Man Standing) and Come y Paga (Eat and Pay), all of which are in one single province, Manabí, famous for strange personal names and place names. A common place name in Spanish-speaking countries is Salsipuedes (meaning "get out if you can"), and of course there's one in Manabí as well.
Aquí (Chile) tenemos pueblos como Victoria y Nacimiento, y ciudades como Concepción y Los Ángeles.
Azores have a place called "Cu de Judas"
I knew about Salsipuedes in Chile but didn't know they were in other places, as well. My husband also talks about Peor Es Nada in Chile, which means "Nothing is Worse."
«Assuming you’ve been able to find the place»😂
That was a lagh-out-loud joke. If you hadn't made a comment to properly appreciate it, I would have.
That was a good joke, made me lol. 😄
only women get it
I’ve heard that before, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Geography Spots are fun to find.
I think Dull twinning with Boring and Bland deserves a special prize.
As for the Welsh town with the long name, I think they inadvertently used as name the instructions to reach and recognise the place...
"Tell me, John, how do I reach that place you mentioned yesterday?"
"I'll write you a note, James, it's easier"
Dull, Boring, and Bland are sometimes called "the trifecta of tedium."
those Welsh names could actually have been a clever way to navigate to the places in times where no other navigation existed... "first go to the-little-swampy-lake-close-to-the-big-oak-tree, and from there on, you can see the-village-with-the-white-painted-church, after which you will come to Saint-Marys-Church-in-the-Hollow-of-the-white-Hazel-near-to-the-rapid-whirlpool-of-Llantisilio-of-the-red-cave". But if you end up in the-summit-where-Tamatea,-the-man-with-the-big-knees,-the-climber-of-mountains,-the-land-swallower-who-travelled-about,-played-his-nose-flute-to-his-loved-one (Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu), you took the wrong turn - because this is in New Zealand.
And because most people were not capable of reading and writing these days, the spelling of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was at anyone's guess 😁
(joking, of course - according to Wikipedia, it was probably a stunt to attract tourists).
@@human_isomer Yes, but I don't think there is anything 'probably' about Llanfair PG's name.
@@rogink sure, I just said "probably" because I didn't check the sources on wikipedia.
Needy and Cornucopia are both in Oregon.
I remember my dad telling me a story from the 80s, when he lived in Arizona, about an almost abandoned town on the route he took to Las Vegas. The towns name was “Nothing” and had a population of only a few people at the time (now everyone is gone). The best part about the town is that the self-proclaimed mayors name was Les Payne. I know nobody will see this comment but I just wanted to archive the funny town name Nothing’s past.
You've reminded me of a story I heard many years ago. I'm not sure if it is true or not but it's one of those stories that *should* be true. Apparently, there is a tombstone somewhere in the American West that commemorates a man who fell in a gunfight: "Here lies the body of Les Moore, killed by five bullets. No less, no more."
@@Frank-Lee-Speeking Poor soul
Evs, nice one! Less pain. Nothing's not past unnoticed. Thanks man 🤠🤗
Intrigued by your comment I googled a bit. There is a nice short clip here on UA-cam wen you search Nothing Arizona. You will see Les Payne and the store. The mayor was either self proclaimed or given 100 dollar for his name to be used as "mayor", in reality the place had no.
@@Frank-Lee-Speeking The correct epitaph is "Here lies Lester Moore, killt with 2 bullets from a .44. No Les, no more." IIRC, it's from Boot Hill, Abilene, Kansas...
The amount of puns in this one is outstanding, as always.
You clearly meant, “number of puns”. An amount of puns would be a pile of ground up puns ready for weighing. (Oh, my poor language! What have they done to you? I will go down fighting to the very end.)
Deez bolz
𝗦𝗲𝘅𝗺𝗼𝗮𝗻, 𝖯𝗁𝗂𝗅𝗂𝗉𝗉𝗂𝗇𝖾𝗌
Sexmoan was changed to Sasmuan on January 15, 1991, under the Republic Act No. 6976.
The name Sexmoan was derived from the ancient Kapampangan root word "sasmo," which means "to meet".
The town was known as Sexmoan until 1991 when the spelling was unanimously changed.
The change was made to avoid the negative connotation of the name and to reflect the town's true history.
I can't find anything negative in the previous name whatsoever! Quite the opposite really.
ah just like the town of Fucking that changed to Fugging, Saves them a lot of money because the Town sign now stays up longer than a few days.
Asia has a few classics. Pee Pee Island, for example.
France has a town called Arse on the ille de Raye
@@HieronymousCheeseThere is to this day a restaurant in Berkeley CA called King Dong. I’ve been laughing about that for over 40 years now.
The one that always makes me laugh is: In Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, there’s a road called Dick Ward Drive that enters into Fannie Bay. ‘Fannie’ means something very different in Australia than it does in America.
I got the story from a business associate that Australian visitors got a good laugh at an exercise equipment store using a sign "fanny reducers".
It means the same in the UK too
What about Bullshit Hill in South Australia.
Blackbutt NSW 😂
In Santa Fe, Argentina, there is a town called «Venado Tuerto», which translates into "One-eyed Deer".
In La Pampa there's a town called «Carro Quemado», "Burnt Cart"
And in Córdoba there's a town named «Salsipuedes», literally "GetOutIfYouCan".
Quite interesting that Argentinians called a town what Spanyards call streets.
ðat last one is sooo ominous
Recently I heard that the village of Fucking, Austria, replaced the normal metal plate road sign at the entrance of the village with one made of concrete that weighs a ton, because tourists kept stealing the old one time and time again.
“Please stop stealing the Fucking town sign”
It's even worse: Things got to the point where in 2021 they changed the spelling to "Fugging", just so people would stop. I don't know if it helped though.
Also: Beers are often named after the town they originated from (e.g. Pilsner from Pilsen in Czechia). Also, a type of german lager is called "Helles" (often shortened to "Hell") for its light color. "Fucking Hell", a beer named after a town it is not brewed in and a type that it is technically not.
@@YieldOnlyyou can also visit the Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany, founded by the businessman Jakob Fugger.
@YieldOnly Well, it did help, sort of. Initially, the new signs were spray painted over so they read "Fucking" after all. But that seems to have been a onetime occurrence.
@@rstrassburg The houses in former Fuggerei built the first sheltered housing in the worls. However, the House of Fugger was so rich that they could buy whole towns or influence kings when they have conflict with the family or with other kings, dukes.
here in Western Australia, we have Misery Beach, Cape Knob, Scented Knob, and many more.
Scented Knob!!!!!! Too...many....jokes... 😊
You also have Dismal Swamp…
There's Iron Knob in SA and Yorkeys Knob in QLD. Seems Australia likes Knobs.
Better Scented Knob than Knob Scented.
One of my favorites is the town of Peculiar, Missouri. The story is that the postmaster couldn't find a name acceptable to the postmaster general, so he wrote, "We don't care what name you give us so long as it is sort of peculiar." I used to vacation in a cabin in the woods just a little past the town. We called the cabin "Beyond Peculiar."
I see somebody beat me to Peculiar, so here's some more interesting place names in Missouri. Under the heading of "named after another city" there's Versailles (pronounced verSAILS) and New Madrid (new MADrid) When some settlers from Raleigh, North Carolina were looking to name their new town they didn't want the same thing to happen to them, so they spelled it so it would be pronounced "correctly": Rolla.
Would be even funnier if the place was named Sort of Peculiar
I ducking love it.
Passed through Peculiar often on the road to Roach, MO.
@@ptorq Not to mention Nevada (neVAHda), and Missouri itself (as missURuh) depending where you are at. Also in my odyessy for stupidity, I found Yukon in Texas (County). It's near Houston. (In Texas county.) Across the river there's Alhambra, which most pronounce (alHAmbra) but is actually (alHAMbra).
In Ireland,we have funny placenames such as Kilmacow, Mooncoin, Leap, Cork, Pilltown, Porridgetown, Kill, Trim, Kilkenny,Mallow, Hospital, Effin,and many more
Mustn't forget Muff in County Donegal!
And also Nober and the river Suck
You should check out Newfoundland names....they are your Irish cousins. Dildo, Conception Bay, Random Island, Blow Me Down, etc.
Hey Rob! Florida has a great town named: Niceville. It used to be called Boggy, but the postman's daughter renamed it in 1910.
It's in the panhandle,isn't it? So is Two Egg. I'm from Lakeland, but the furthest I have been away is St. Augustine and Perry. I always heard the panhandle was nice.
You forgot Middelfart in Denmark!
"Assuming you've been able to find the place" really got me.
Chilean native here. We have our fair share of weird town names. Peor Es Nada ( It's Worse To Own Nothing) in the 7h Region. The story is that a landowner died and left most of his estate to his sons and only a small part to her only daughter. The lady shrugged her shoulders and said the phrase before and so the town got is name. Another example is Las Coimas ( literally The Bribes), a little town in the Valparaiso region which took its name after a local Customs post that operated there. Being an isolated post it's easy to assume that the customs officers had some dubious practices when checking baggage. And there's also Purgatory, a small town near the Nahuelbuta range, named like that because going into and out of the place is extremely difficult due to the conditions of the road. Very funny video, by the way, Rob.
You probably could have made a video like this just about Newfoudland... so many funny place names there. From Tickle Cove to Come By Chance, from Virgin Cove to Conception Bay and Happy Valley. Newfoundland is one happy place. :)
One of those Newfoundland towns should partner with the town of Climax here in North Carolina. 🤷🏻♂️
@@FilosophicalPharmer or Intercourse PA
Come by Chance sounds like the name of a second hand / vintage shop xD
I went to a pre-K school called "Happy Valley". It was definitely not happy, I hated that school.
@@pipmitchell7059 I honestly don’t know why I wrote Nova Scotia! 🫣😲😱 Edit: corrected. I just couldn’t stand mistake remaining for all to see! 😜👍🏼
I once met a woman from Slapout, Alabama. She said there was once a single store in that crossroads village, and it was never well stocked. Whatever you asked for, you were likely to hear the clerk say he was "Slap out of it." In American Southernese "slap out" roughly translates to "completely out."
For a moment there I thought you were starting a limerick
There's also the famous bergs of Lick Skillet, Alabama, and Smoke Rise, Alabama
@@matthewgrumbling4993 Met a woman from Slapout in 'Bama
She said with a bit of a stammer
"In this state by the sea,
We've got family trees
Such that my sister's my gramma"
Thank you for the video! I would appreciate a second part.
From the top of my head I know two weird German village names: Linsengericht ("Lentil Dish") and Deppendorf ("Moron's Village")
There’s also a village (or town, not sure) in Thuringen called Lederhose. Always brings a smile!
Und Pulverdingen (powery things)
I've been through Dusseldorf on a train but I've always wondered what the "Dussel" part meant. In my mother's dialect of German - she grew up in Schleswig - a "dussel" (not sure about the spelling) is an idiot but I'm having trouble believing a major city name translates as "idiots town". Then again, given the other examples in this town, I suppose anything is possible.
So here in Germany we have a few ones, too.
Ostereistedt, Hymendorf. Drangstedt and Flögeln close to each other north of Rotenburg (Wümme), translating to Easter Egg Town (if you pronounce it slightly wrong), Hymen Village, Urge Town and let's say Blonk or Fluck.
Büchsenschinken near Reinbek - Canned Ham.
Lederhose near Gera, Leather Trousers.
Regenmantel near Seelow, Rain Coat.
Oberkaka and Unterkaka near Zeitz, Upper and Lower Poo-Poo.
Petting near Traunstein, well, Petting.
Poing near München (or Munich if you so wish), which you could decipher as a word for Mooning in a German-English neologism.
Wixhausen, roughly Wank Houses, which is a part of Darmstadt, Colon City.
Kotzen near Rathenow, To-Vooomit (due to the long o the name has instead of the short one in the verb)
Pissen near Leipzig, To-Piss
and finally Hackpfüffel, which does not translate to anywhere, but sounds like a comic writer needed a funny word.
Additional Amerika, Texas, Brasilien, Kalifornien and the like, but they don't qualify as funny, I guess.
In Austria there was the village Fucking (the u pronounced with the sound from look, not with that from fuck), but after years of getting the city limit signs stolen they decided to now go by the name of Fugging.
You also hit the town of Wankum when you drive in from Netherlands
@kti5682 They are quite close to each other in the Harz (Resin, a mountain range), aren't they?
ich möchte hinzufügen:
Geilsdorf (zip: 08538) -> geil (eng. horny) and dorf (engl. village)
Tuntenhausen (close to Freising, close to Munich) -> "Tunte" is a very unfriendly word in german for a male gay person (adding the n means just plural) and hausen (eng.home)
Tittenkoofen (zip code: 85447) -> i guess u english native speakers could guess what "Titten" might means. correct, it's tits. And koofen doesn't exist in modern day german but it sounds in some dialects like "kaufen" (eng. buy)
In the Czech Republic:
Kuttenplan (cz: Chodová Planá, zip: 348 15) -> Kutten (eng.: cowls) and plan is also in english plan
No mention of Pant-y-wacco, Wales? Perhaps in the next video. (Please make more of these-- if playing GeoGuessr has taught me nothing else, it's that there are more ridiculous placenames in the world than we thought.)
6:20 "I'm not gonna keep that bit in, it's terrible." 😆
Rob, please do consider Chicken Alaska. It is a small town with a very strange name origin story. Nearby is Eagle Alaska. So this town wanted to name itself after an Alaskan bird too. So they chose the ptarmigan. But no one could agree on how to spell it. So someone finally just said "Let's just call it chicken and be done with it." And that sounded like a reasonable solution to them.
😂
You forgot dead horse Alaska
I've always wanted to go to Chicken as it is a blink and you'd miss it kind of place but it has a twenty four hour license bar!!!!
@@sandraashton868 Yeah and it's really out there on a dirt road too.
On the drive to Deadhorse, keep an eye out for Gobbler's Knob, just north of Coldfoot.
PLEASE make more name/place videos. I laughed SO hard!😅
in austria there are a towned fugging old name fucking.
We used to visit Cocking every summer to visit my great aunt. It was a quite long and boring journey, apart from when we passed through Wyre Piddle.
There is a town in New York state called Fishkill. The name comes from the Dutch as "vis kill", and in their language it means "fish creek." But this didn't stop PETA members from petitioning the town council to rename it "Fishsafe."
lol, gotta give it to PETA, they really know how to troll
The nearby Catskill mountains are lovely, especially in the autumn.
In modern Dutch kill certainly doesn’t mean creek. Do you have a reference on the origin of the name? I wonder if it’s some bastardization of some old Dutch word.
I used to live in Slaughterville, OK (Named for a founding member) and PETA once tried to get them to change their name to "Veggieville" in exchange for free vegetarian meals for the school...which Slaughterville doesn't have, because Slaughterville is nothing more than 2 dozen mobile homes and a giant, fantastically creepy bug sculpture made from an old VW Beetle.
As a software engineer, I once had business in Fishkill. There was (is?) a sprawling IBM facility there that was basically its own town, complete with a modern Fire Department.
In Tuscany, Italy there are two small towns near one another, one called Pesciamorta - the name meaning 'dead fish' in Italian, and Femminamorta, meaning 'dead woman' - both are lovely places 🙂
I live in a city called Coquitlam, which is from an indigenous place-name meaning "place where the fish stink." There's a bend in the river where the dead salmon from the spawning would build up.
I live in Oregon. The highway sign to Boring also shows that you can get to Oregon City on the same route, thus, if you're driving you'll see a sign for "Boring Oregon City", which I always found funny.
Rob, great stuff as always! Let me do something of a Texas boast: I think we have more funny names of towns than anywhere else. Witness: Oatmeal, Gravy, Matador, Bacon, Noodle, Noodle Dome, Heckville, Finney Switch, Happy Union, New Deal, Ding-Dong, Jot-Em-Down, Cut and Shoot, Bigfoot, Gun Barrel City, Bug Tussle, Frognot, Dimebox, Uncertain, and, of course, our own Nameless. In addition, you can travel the world and not leave Texas. Here's your itinerary: Athens, Naples, Geneva, Paris, Moscow, and closer to home: Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Newcastle, and--why not?--London.
You forgot Mobeetie, Texas (population 101), and New Mobeetie. 'Cos one town named for a native word for "buffalo dung" (allegedly) ain't enough.
Virginia has Frog Level and Squirrel Level. I can't help but wonder what they leveled...
And also Wink.
Flower Mound too.
"Oatmeal? Are you crazy?!"
Fun fact: Monster in Dutch is exactly the same as in English, so here, we find it a funny place name as well. In addition to Monster, we also have Goor (disgusting) en Sexbierum (bier means beer).
Or Rectum, a hamlet (in the vicinity of Goor) in east part of the country
WHAT! Monster in Dutch and Afrikaans means : SAMPLE.
@@robert-trading-as-Bob69 It also means sample, yes.
@mugi2595 I was in a rush when I typed that.. battery was dying.
It is used for both in Afrikaans today, not just as sample.
And we have a town called Hulk.
There's Mexican Hat, Utah, named after a local geologic formation. And the ghost town of Mosquito, Colorado. The townsfolks (miners) were meeting, attempting to come up with a name for their settlement. Before they could come up with one, the called the end of the meeting, When the next met, the opened up the minutes of the previous meeting and found a mosquito squashed between the pages, and they adopted that as the name of their town, the creek flowing past it, the mining district, and the pass between them and Leadville (named for the lead that was getting hung up in their sluices while gold mining, later to be found full of silver).
I have been to Mexican Hat. Very very small town. They have a motel in a canyon that me and my family stayed in.
There is another ghost town in Colorado named Tomboy. Not far from another town my family went to.
There's also a Medicine Hat, Alberta
Alberta, Canada has a city called Medicine Hat. It's Wikipedia article describes the theories about the origins of the name.
In Denmark we have a town called Sæd (Semen) and Tarm (Intestine). Recently there was an accident in Tarm involving manure leaking from a silo, giving the colourful title of an article "Gylle-drama i Tarm" (Manure drama in Tarm).
Dont forget the town of Lem (member);)
In France there’s a famous town named Montcuq ! It is heard as « Mon cul » which can be translated as « my ass », so there’s tons and tons of jokes that have been done around its name !
So happy to hear someone finally mention Cocking. I went to school in Cocking, Cocking Primary School to be exact although it is no longer there, demolished many years ago to make way for houses. Living in the area near Cocking, over the years, many signposts were graffited or even stolen. On a recent trip home to visit my mother, I noticed that they have now removed Cocking from the signpost (probably to save money replacing it). However, I never lived in Cocking. I grew up 3 miles away from Cocking in a tiny little hamlet called... Didling. I now live in Scotland, about 20 miles from Dull
Obviously all this cocking up and diddling around makes Spikle a dull thing. Maybe not the fate you hoped for..
I can't speak for the city of Monster, but there's a historical example here in Washington state for "Monster" as a Surname. Renton, WA has a "Monster Road" named for the Monster family of settlers. If you search for "Baby Monster Grave" you'll find the headstone of "Baby Monster" from the cemetery in Kent, WA where the Monster family is buried.
Hi ! Apparently, as for Münster (germany), it could come from the name "Monastery"
I didnt know some people were named "monster", thats a strange surname !
@@MuchenaftMünster, name of a city in Germany.
People named Monster or Munster are named after the career. Which is funny because pretty much all monks are supposed to not have kids.
Monster means pattern in Swedish
According to (the Dutch) Wikipedia, the origin of the name of the town Monster is unclear. It may have come from the latin name for cloister/monastery - monasterium - but there was no monastery there, only a large church. It was also a place of pilgrimage. The settlement originated in the tenth century CE. Apparently, an older name for the place was Masamuda, which would have meant Mouth of the (river) Maas.
The word "monster" in modern Dutch means both a "sample" and, just as in English, a grotesque being.
Fabulous video! Great sense of humour! Excellent delivery! Bravo!!!
MORE PLEASE!!!!
There's a small borough in the outskirts of Stockholm named Pungpinan, which translates as "The Scrotum Pain". The reason is that historically the word that today is primarily used for scrotum in Swedish was historically used for coin purses and there was supposedly a particularly expensive inn there.
Wait... coin purses were made from old scrotums?
I imagine the town on Monsteras is funny to English speakers.
@@peter_kitsuneThe plural is "scrota" BTW.
Speaking of odd place name origins, there's a small in town in West Virginia that used to be called Molehill. I wish I knew the origin of that name, but I don't. It's probably an interesting story. Anyhow, in the 1930's, someone started a campaign to change the town's name because they claimed they thought it sounded stupid. They finally convinced enough people to approve the change, and the ceremony where the change was officially made legal was broadcast on the radio. The town's name was changed to Mountain. At the end of the ceremony, someone said over the radio, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, we've made a mountain out of a molehill."
I have feeling that most of people wanted name change to make fool of original complainer; wish that someone would have filmed their face after that pun 🤣
@@valivali8104 No, it was the original complainer who made a fool of everyone else.
@@bigscarysteve was they one who made that pun?
@@valivali8104 Yes.
I am going to believe that someone set this all into motion JUST to make that joke.
A Danish one that sounds funny in English, is Middelfart. It means Middle Journey and refers to it being half way on a travel from one end of the country to the other.
Fart means journey, speed, travel, and is also used in "fartkontrol": Speed control.
You beet me to Middelfart
Book shop in danish causes Brits some amusement too
@MarkUKInsects Bog handle. I had never thought of that one. 😄
My English aunt finds it quaint that we still call pharmacies apotek/apothecary.
I don't live far away from Rude. As a Brit in Denmark, I found in rather amusing the first time I saw it - it had never occurred to my Danish wife what it said 😁
@DannyMonaghan69 I once did business with a Czech man called Pik. It was so awkward. 😬
His full name was Pikous, and I said that I felt more comfortable being formal and using his full name. If I hadn't, I would have giggled like a 12-year-old. I didn't tell him the truth.
Denmark has a lot of place names that sound ridicolous - either because they actually mean something funny, or because they just have a dirty ring to them. Pictures of Danish direction signs used to be classic internet humour in Norway before memes were a thing.
Your quick comment during your NordVPN ad resulted in me spitting my morning coffee across the table. Well done sir!
Thanks for the mention of Ugley near where I grew up - and yes, there really is (or was 50 years ago) "The Ugley Women's Institute!" It's not that far from Six Mile Bottom, but you plumbed the depths of that joke with much better examples ...
I absolutely love that Dull paired with Boring
"Å" is not only a placename it is actually a word, meaning stream or river.
Interesting. There is actually a river in the north of France called Aa
Å is besides the last letter in the alphabet. At least in Denmark. And Norway.
@@smoker_joe May be related?! I looked up the etymology for "Å" (Norwegian, small river/stream).
Turns out back in the day it was spelled... Aa/aa.
Root is norse: Á
Then i found that a protonorse word for water is "Ahva". Possibly related.
Update, found some more: "Ahva" is suspiciously similar to "Aqua". The are related! Proto germanic "akhwo". (hard to say which came first).
BUT!!! There is an old English word for river, related, "Ea". HAh! It is basically the same word! "Å" - "Ea".
Trivia: Å would mean "any river". If you are referencing a specific river it would be åa or åen (adding a or en to the ending., "a" ending if the dialect consider river to be female or "en" if the dialect consider it to be male).
So if I drop my phone in the river I should say “Å no!”
@@holdermeddk In Swedish and Finnish it ends Å, Ä, Ö. I've always found it strange how you have them in the order Æ, Ø, Å.
In the czech republic we have a town called Horní Police (it means upper shelf)
You should do more. You could create a whole series on this topic, so many places come to mind. Tarzana California, which is named after Tarzan who is a character in a book, Lake Titicaca, and so many examples already in the comments.
My father grew up in Looneyville, West Virginia. My great-grandmother's maiden name was Looney.
Thanks for making me smile Rob. It would be churlish if I said I was disappointed there was no mention of Twatt.
Exactly! I came here to mention that too. I was thinking of the Twatt in Shetland, but there's also one in Orkney.
And I came on to mention them too!
The state of Arizona has quite a few oddly named places such as:
Why, Carefree, Nothing, Christmas, Three Way, Strawberry, Dragoon, Surprise, Mexican Water, Top-Of-The-World, So-Hi, Show Low, Santa Claus, Snowflake, Wagon Wheel, Love, Avenue B and C (just one city, not two).
There's also-- Tuba City, Mammoth, Many Farms, Klondyke, Coffee Pot, Beaver Dam, Ash Fork, Mexican Water, Blue Gap, Round Rock, and Rough Rock. Other than Tuba City and a couple others, I have no idea how populated they are.
In New Mexico, there's Elephant Butte, too, though a Butte is a real landmark.
You can find a lot of weird towns just by surfing Google Maps lol
Another great video, Rob, and thanks for taking the time to amuse us. There does, however, appear to be a glaring omission! Where was Twatt, in Orkney? 😲
In Pennsylvania, they have both Intercourse and Blue Ball, which are right by each other! Blue Ball was named after the Blue Ball Hotel, built more than two hundred years ago, which was torn down in 1997. In the early 18th century, John Wallace built a small building in Earl Town (the place's original name) and hung a blue ball out front from a post and called it "The Sign of the Blue Ball". Thus, the locals started calling the town that.
Intercourse on the other hand was formerly known as Cross Keys, named after a local tavern. Intercourse became the name in 1814. How? Well there is no clear story but there are a couple theories. One suggests it is derived from a sign at an old racecourse on the edge of town which said "Enter course". Another says it's for two big roads that crossed there. The Old King's highway from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh (now the Old Philadelphia Pike) ran east and west through the center of the town. The road from Wilmington to Erie intersected in the middle. The joining of these two roads is claimed by some to be the basis for the town.
The best part of the story is it's also in Amish country, go figure...
Australia has its own set of weird, if not wonderful place names.
There are too many to list but these, need special mention.
Come By Chance, Wee Waa, Useless Loop, Running Jump Creek, Scented knob, Chinamans knob, Bong Bong, Greg Greg, Big Dick Bore, Linger and die Creek and the longest name in Australia, Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill in South Australia. It's a word from the local Pitjantjatjara language that means, “where the devil urinates”.
also Tittybong, Yorkys Knob, East Intercourse Island
I was sent to Sydney to do penance at IBM. I worked with a fellah named Buddy, whose wife was named Dee. One saturday they took me on a drive and passed a sign pointing to DEE WHY. I asked Buddy if that's what he says to his wife when she wants him to do a job or two adound the house.
Newfoundland, Canada, also has Come By Chance.
Mount Sheila, Cockburn, Iron Knob, Boobs Flat, Fannie Bay, Mt. Nameless, Bald Knob, Prominent Knob, this could go on all day.... 🙂
There is a farm in South Africa named: Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein. It means "Two buffaloes killed with one shot, fountain". Also strange that in South Africa, there are a multitude of places named after a fountain, without there being any noticeable fountains in the area.
Isn't fontein also source, spring? So might have been places where you could find even dug up water.
@@HotelPapa100 Could be. You are probably right.
In Afrikaans 'fountain' does mean spring - i.e. a place where underground water comes to the surface. In a water-stressed country, you tend to get obsessed with such things.
Daar is ook ‘n snaakse spelling van die Zoeloe wapen as ‘n voorstad van Durban, ‘Assagay’.
Modderfontein, meaning mud fountain. Eat some KFC there and you may develop a mud fountain!
What a treat to join this tour of offbeat names! I'd live to see more, for sure!
And in South Africa (in case I missed it) Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, which is actually a farm and is the 4th longest place name in the world. It means "the spring where two buffaloes were killed with a single shot.
Please do more of these Rob as you truly outdid yourself on this one. Superb job. :-) This is good and near Benny Hill level entertainment. :-) RIP Mr. Hill.
Very close to where I live in Southland, New Zealand there is a charming rural settlement called Mabel’s Bush. I have to admit I giggle whenever I drive past the sign.
It may be interesting to do a video on spam/game/etc. filters with the Scunthorpe problem and the related buttbuttin problem. The second one is due to replacing rude words with less rude ones in game chat/etc. for hilarity when playing as an assassin.
I once saw someone who's name was Nasser, but the censorship made their name N***er with the asterisks
And Penistone
Spam spam spam.... Lovely spam...
It’s also called the clbuttic (classic) problem.
There are also several parts of Melbourne Australia named "Batman", and the city itself was almost named "Batmania" after the founding figure of John Batman. I remember meeting a woman who had recently arrived from the UK, and it just happened to be in the middle of an election campaign. There were signs all over the part of town she was staying in with pictures of candidates as "Greens for Batman" or "Liberal for Batman", "Your local Independent for the community of Batman". She was utterly bemused as to why politicians were advertising themselves as advocates of a super hero, until I explained that the electorate was actually named after John Batman.
Although we do pronounce it differently to the superhero. We pronounce it more like Batmin, with the "i" barely being pronounced. My suburb, Coburg, in northern Melbourne, shares the same postcode as Batman. I've had a few puzzled looks from check-in staff at foreign hotels when they have checked my postcode and had it come up with Batman (since "b" comes before "c").
I live in a wine producing area of Spain- Ribeira Sacra (hence my channel name) There is a village called Sober. it is produced slightly differently in Spanish to English. But still it is worth a photo opportunity.
I think I'll take that photo opportunity if I ever stop drinking.
"Assuming you've been able to find the place" Thanks,Rob. Never gets old for me.
Surprised you didn’t cover the German-Austrian cycle ride from Kissing-München-Petting-Titmoning and on to the town that’s now called Fugging (as the locals got fed up replacing the sign containing “ck”)! 😂
They changed the name? I wondered why he didn’t mention it!
WAIT THERES A TOWN CALLED FUCKING???? LOL HOW????
Here in Australia there are loads of odd place names. Two that spring to mind without me thinking too hard are Worlds End and Goodnight. There's also Colignan, not an odd name per se, but the town of Nangiloc (which is Colignan backwards) is about 6 miles away as the crow flies.
Yeah, no body part inferences in those ones, sorry
There's Lake Disappointment as well.
We have a Goodnight in Missouri, USA, too! There's a mountain of weird names here. I could list about 40, and not even scratch the surface. Like Pilot Knob, Knob Noster, Knob Lick, Licking, and Toad Hollow, to name a few. 😂
Definitely do more!!
In Brazil we have a few cities with funny names: "Não-Me-Toque" (literally "do not touch me"), "Venha Ver" ("come and see"), "Passa e Fica" ("pass it by and stay"), "Paudalho" ("garlic stick", but in Brazilian slang it could be "garlic penis"), "Carrasco Bonito" ("pretty executioner").
Ponta Grossa
Pintópolis
Coité-do-Nóia
Anta Gorda
😂😂😂😂
So many to choose from here in Canada but just a few are Climax, Wawa, Snowball, and Sparkle City where I used to live.
Best thing to watch on a Saturday evening
Australia has it's fair share of these too, but Burpengary is one that always makes me laugh. DO MORE PLEASE!
There’s also the town in Australia with a racial slur.
@@ferretyluv and lots of Knobs for some reason...
Here in NY, we have our fair share of weird names. Like Coxsackie! No, it's not what you're thinking. It's supposed to be pronounced cook-sock-ee. The name from the Algonquin word mak-kachs-hack-ing. When the land was purchased by the Dutch settlers, the name was written as Koxhackung. It is generally translated as "Hoot-owl place" or "place of many owls". Or Chili! Despite the way it's spelled, it was named in honor of Chile. But it's not pronounced like Chile either, it's instead pronounced as CHY-lye. There's also Mexico! It's both the name of a village and the name of the township the village is in. The first Mexico (a proposed county), with all the surrounding towns, was originally created from Town of Whitestown, Oneida County in April 1792
The original organization of the proposed Mexico County and a town of that name was abandoned for a time. In December 1794, German-born George Frederick William Augustus Scriba purchased and patented a large tract of land, subsequently becoming a second Mexico, hence the Village of Mexico and the Town of Mexico. George named it Mexico because he had a special interest in Central America. It was renamed to Vera Cruz for a bit as George Scriba hoped that the City of Mexico (or Vera Cruz), now town of Mexico, would grow to become a grand port city on Lake Ontario that the world would envy.
The Coxsackie virus…..
Interestingly enough, there are a group of viruses know as Coxsackie viruses, and they include polio varieties.
The Dutch place names of the Hudson Valley create all manner of weirdness and weird pronunciations. "Fishkill" named after the Fishkill Creek. But "kill" is an old Dutch word for "creek". So, "Fish Creek Creek." And then there's "Valatie", which is pronounced something like, "Valayshia".
Muff in Northern Ireland is situated on a natural harbour. They have a diving club. Literally, the Muff diving club.
Sorry, but I need to correct both Rob and yourself. Muff is not in Northern Ireland as you said. It is in Ulster. Co Donegal and part of the Republic of Ireland, and very not British.
Love your videos - I grew up near Nasty in Puckeridge, so was a shock watching the video to see my childhood village come up (the meaning of which I'm told is Fairy under the Bridge).
Saw two other villages with interesting pronunciations and possibly etymologies near Nasty - Braughing (pronounced Braffing), and Haultwick (pronounced Artic) - is this something you could shed light on, or is there a resource I can look up to find the origins?
You could probably do a whole episode just on all of the interesting place names in Newfoundland.
I was thinking the same!
@@somethingelsehere8089 great minds think alike (fools seldom differ) 😉
Too true! Lol! Newfie here!
Oh, yes, please! I spent two wonderful summer vacations in Newfoundland with my family as a child, and I absolutely loved it!
Okay @robwords, looks like you need to take a trip to Newfoundland and parse the entomology of their unique way of speaking. Have some screech while you're there
More, more, more, please!
I'm originally from New York City and a linguist. I've lived near some strangely named places. Right now, I live in Pennsylvania which contains "Blue Ball". That town is not too terribly far away from "Intercourse".
Unfortunately, as you alluded to in this video, "the colonies" are rife with odd place names. There's a "Reader's Digest, New York". There's also one in New Mexico. I know the stories surrounding both of those and I'll go into detail, if you like, but I hate typing. So, I'll end this for now.
Keep up the good work, Rob. I find most of your videos to be extremely entertaining.
In Quebec, there was a govt minister named Lise Bacon (French). After one kerfuffle, the anglo newspaper's headline was "Bacon Sizzles". They couldn't resist, who could? but she was furious.
Aww! In Tasmania 1998-2004 we had a state premier called Jim Bacon. His wife’s name was Honey. His name was often used in lines like that
My native state of North Carolina, USA, has a few oddly named towns. There's Lizard Lick, Whynot, and Scotland Neck. A couple of mildly suggestive places are Apex and Climax. There's also Cumnock. I'm sure the stories behind some of these odd names would be interesting. I really enjoy your videos!!! Greetings from Virginia, USA.
I was going to mention Whynot, but you beat me. North Carolina also has Bat Cave.
@@topherthe11th23 I would like to see it become a sibling city to French Lick, Indiana, home of the American basketball player Larry Bird.
We used to have to drive through Horneytown to get to my parents' house in North Carolina.
I remember reading about town names in the US that were named during the western expansion through the 1800's and later had their names changed by official government rules, because the names were found to be unacceptable. I only remember a few of them: Bullshit Springs was changed to Bullshirt Springs (which isn't much of an improvement), and Whorehouse Meadows was changed to Naughty Girl Meadows.
I also heard that Nome, Alaska was named by mistake. As sailors were charting out the Alaskan coast, they saw the settlement and didn't know what its name was, so someone wrote "Name?" on the map, and the person's handwriting was misread as "Nome".
After mentioning Llanfair..., I'm surprised you didn't mention Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, commonly known as "Lake Gog". The name comes from an old native land treaty between two tribes, and means, "We fish on our side, you fish on your side, nobody fishes in the middle."
Zzyzx Road is usually pronounced to rhyme with "physics". I've driven past it many times. It's off of Interstate 15, that goes from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Everyone who's ever driven to Vegas from southern California has seen the Zzyzx Road sign.
And I also learned about a place called Just Enough Room Island - the smallest inhabited island in the world. 3300 square feet, or about 1/13 of an acre. Originally called "Hub Island", someone bought it, and built his house on it. I suppose he has the right to rename it, if he owns it. One house, one tree, a few shrubs, a little bit of beach.
Zye-zix may also be accepted.
@@w.reidripley1968 Yes. Apparently, that's what the guy who came up with the name intended. It doesn't follow the usual rules of pronunciation. Not having a second vowel, there's nothing to indicate a long vowel sound, and therefore a short vowel sound would usually be indicated. For example "gym" and "rhythm" as opposed to "lyre" and "xylophone".
"Ludicrous labelling of localities"😂 Lovely 'lliteration! 😁
Entertaining and educational as always. My favorite place name is "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump" in Canada.
Fantastic content, high production value. Great job Rob!
Thanks a lot, Sebastian! And thanks for watching.
@@RobWords "The settlement with the excrement..." 🤣 Still laughing!
You really should review Jug Tavern and Marthasville, Georgia. Both places changed their names to Winder and Atlanta.
I'm a few seconds in, and stopped to predict if Chinaman's Knob will feature in this video; placename to, not one nor two, but to _three_ different locations in Australia.
2:27 The fact you said that flawlessly, even if it wasn't the first attempt is impressive
There's a lot of funny place name in Japanese for us Mandarin speakers, since Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi has tons of linguistic false friend, ranging from slightly weird to nonsense. One of the more famous one, is a place in near Tokyo call Abiko 我孫子 it's just a normal place name in Japanese but it mean 'my grandson' in Mandarin, apparently we also got omachi machi 大町町 it mean 'big town' town in both language, But, in Mandarin the character 町 has the same pronunciation as 丁 and make the name sound like 大丁丁 which is one of the way of implying big PP.
In addition to Nameless (which I didn’t know about despite living in Tennessee my entire life), we also have:
Sweet Lips
Finger
Three Way
Dancyville
Blue Goose
Goat City
Friendship
not one but TWO places called Frog Jump (like the two “Twatts” mentioned by some other commenters)
Hicksville
Only
Bucksnort
Stinking Creek
Wartburg
Nankipoo
Bugtussle
I just can't stop laughing! And your delivery is spot on, Rob! Some of those "Bottoms" were totally new to me.. 🤦🏻♀️ At least Dull is now twinned with Boring and Bland! 🤣
If I still lived in the UK I'd be laughing over my fish 'n' chips.. (I miss them too! 😂)
Thanks for a brilliant vid.. 👏
They may be Dull, Boring and Bland but at least they have sense of humor 😂
@@valivali8104 True!! 🤣🤣
@@pimpozza 😳😊
Dull, boring and bland should be twinned with some of austrian places called "Oed" (which means kind of boring, originally an expression for a barren or deserted area)
Where I live, there are these two streets that used to be named "This Street" and "That Street". My dad almost lost his job for telling his boss that he was "at the corner of This Street and That Street". Boss got mad, yelled at dad over the radio, and jumped in his truck. When he got there, there was dad leaning on the street sign at the intersection of This Street and That Street. Sadly, the streets have since been renamed.
What town, you ask? It's a town called Pinetop-Lakeside. The Lakeside part is obvious (it was started on the side of a lake). The Pinetop part... you'd THINK it was named after the local pine trees but nope. It was named after a red headed bartender. But even if where the name came from isn't intuitive, it's not weird enough to end up on a "weird place name list" like neighboring Show Low does (named after the winning hand in a card game). But Show Low's got nothing on Why, which was named after... no, not a question... a fork in the road.
The Zzyzx Road thing is more interesting. The guy who made up the name was a snake oil salesman who set up this mineral bath center at the end of the road. It's now abandoned.
Hilarious! There are way more weird place names than I thought. I was hoping my home state of Indiana would make the list with French Lick.
Or the nearby Loogootee.
Or the Southern Indiana town of Floyd’s Knobs.
This was hilarious! Thanks for bringing a smile to a crummy day.