Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to Thailand, next to the block-long sign at Bangkok's city hall that prints the city's full
163-letter name. Names don't have to be long to be memorable. You could spend months
inBritainjustvisitingallthenaughtylittlelanesandvillagesthatseemtohavebeennamed
byBennyHill:TittyHo,ScratchyBottom,Wetwang,EastBreast,Cockplay.InanAmeric-
anroadatlas, theeccentrictowntoponyms allseemfulloffolksyroadsidehistory:Cheese-
quake, New Jersey; Goose Pimple Junction, Virginia; Ding Dong, Texas.
Most of these places came by their names honestly. Goose Pimple Junction was once
home to a warring couple whose noisy obscenities would make neighbors' skin crawl.
Cheesequake is just a corruption of the Lenape Indian word “Cheseh-oh-ke,” meaning
“upland village.” Ding Dong, Texas, was named for a local sign painting of ringing bells
(it's located in Bell County). But sometimes such names seem a little too good to be
true because they are. Take that fifty-eight-letter Welsh village. It was plain old “Llan-
fair Pwllgwyngyll” until the 1860s, when an enterprising local tailor concocted the longer
name as a publicity stunt, hoping to bring in tourist revenue. (Perhaps the town needed
to buy a vowel.) So Llanfairpwll is the spiritual ancestor of all those desperate Americ-
an towns today that sell their souls by renaming themselves for dot-coms and celebrities.
Sometimes the contest-winning names stick: the former Hot Springs, New Mexico, is still
called “Truth or Consequences” more than thirty years after the game show for which it
was named went off the air. The former Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, will probably be
called “Jim Thorpe” as long as the renowned Olympian is still buried there. * But more of-
ten than not, the new name fades almost as soon as the headlines do. Half.com , Oregon,
went back to being Halfway, Oregon , after only a year of sellout-hood. Joe, Montana, is
just plain Ismay, Montana, again. Such gimmicky name swaps have always rubbed me the
wrong way—maps are sacred! Would you sell ad space on the side of Mount Rushmore?
So I applauded in 2005 when the tiny hamlet of Sharer, Kentucky, turned down the chance
to earn $100,000 by changing its name to PokerShare.com . The town's Bible Belt resid-
ents, it seems, didn't cotton to none of that Internet gambling.
Butnamenotorietycanbeatwo-edgedsword.Forevery Half.com , Oregon,happilytak-
ing big checks and a new high school computer lab from a money-mad dot-com, there's a
Butt Hole Road in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire. Cabbie Peter Sutton, who lives on the
road, told the Daily Mail that the road's cheeky name was a big draw for him when he
first moved there—he couldn't believe the previous owners were moving out because they
didn't like the name. But the novelty soon wore off, thanks to the endless stream of prank
calls, skeptical delivery drivers, and busloads of tourists posing for pictures while moon-
ing the street sign. The street was named for a communal rain barrel (or “water butt”) loc-
ated on the spot long ago, but history didn't matter: in 2009, the neighbors collected the
three-hundred-pound fee and the city changed the name to the much less distinctive Arch-
ers Way. *
 
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