Wikivoyage

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Travel topics > Cultural attractions > Places with unusual names

Whether they're unusually short, unusually long, sound like a naughty English word, or are just plain silly, places with unusual names can be fun destinations.

Understand edit

Both in English-speaking countries and elsewhere you can find places that have names that sound weird to English speakers. Many of these places are small towns without much to do, but some offer T-shirts or other souvenirs with the place's name. If nothing else, you can always take a picture with a highway sign or "Welcome to X" sign to show your friends later. In non-English speaking countries, however, you may encounter even large cities and major travel destinations with unusual names.

For English-speaking countries, it's common that a funny name derives from a completely normal name in an older form of English or a native name for the place. In a few cases the name has been intentionally changed from a normal name to a more unusual one. In non-English speaking countries the unusual name of the place is of course just a normal name to the locals. This works the other way around too, normal names in English-speaking countries might sound funny to a foreigner. For instance, the small town of Roto, New South Wales, Australia has found its way onto lists of funny place names in Spanish, in which it means "broken". Finnish-speaking visitors may find Herne ("pea") Bay in Kent funny, as well as Piha ("yard") in New Zealand and the country of Nauru ("laughter").

See and do edit

All but the smallest destinations on the list usually have other attractions, but given that you are in a place with a funny or unusual name, why not take a photo of road, street and perhaps even business signs with the name?

Buy edit

In some cases the place has indeed turned the name into a tourist attraction and therefore there are funny souvenirs you can buy, like the "Hell frozen over" postcards. Look out for bumper stickers, hats, T-shirts, mugs, postcards, or similar items at general stores, gas stations and souvenir shops.

Connect edit

Often, these places offer a unique postmark for postcards, seasonal greetings from North Pole or love notes from Valentine. North Pole, Alaska has been known to sell "a letter from Santa" with the town's postmark.

Respect edit

The locals are probably tired of hearing jokes about the name of their city. The names were often chosen many years ago, when the words had no double meaning, or make sense locally as the name only looks odd in the English language. Hypothetically, if "phoque" is a seal in some other language, there's no reason a community speaking that language shouldn't give the name to a geographic feature—even if phonetically it resembles an English-language expletive.

Also, don't feel tempted to steal any road signs no matter how funny the names on them are. Like the Route 66 signs that have been lost to souvenir hunters often enough for the locals to start painting the highway number shields directly onto the asphalt, these are needed for navigation by subsequent travellers.

Africa edit

 
Mafia Airport, the gateway to Mafia Island

Benin edit

Democratic Republic of the Congo edit

  • Banana, a small coastal city and seaport near the larger city of Muanda, separating Mainland Angola and Cabinda.

Madagascar edit

  • Nosy Be, a resort island. Here you can also find the city of Hell-Ville, and nearby a few smaller Nosy islands.

South Sudan edit

  • Yei and Wau (South Sudan), two major South Sudanese cities that might make visitors exclaim yay! and wow!

Tanzania edit

  • Mafia Island, reportedly one of the Indian Ocean's most hidden gems. Organized crime is probably not an issue here.

Asia edit

Bangladesh edit

  • Matlab, a region in Chandpur District. The location is famous for several public health projects instead of engineering and computational science.

China edit

 
View of Guide
  • Guide, a small town, so you maybe don't need a guide.
  • She County, Handan, location of the Wahuang Palace, a temple dedicated to the goddess Nüwa.

Hong Kong edit

  • Junk Bay, which co-incidentally has a landfill at the east of the bay (although originally named for the kind of boat). Nearby areas are mainly newly developed satellite towns.

Indonesia edit

  • Java The programming language is named after coffee produced on the island, and there's no point to communicate with the locals using public static void main(String[] args) {}
  • Gili Air (pronounced "gee-lee EYE"), an island, not an airline
  • Solo, the short name for Surakarta

India edit

  • Indore probably has more outdoor activities than the name would make the casual observer assume
  • Peermade, a city in Kerala, that may or may not have been "peer made".
  • Lucknow does not give you instant luck when you step into the city.

Japan edit

  • Hitachi, Ibaraki, the city where the multinational corporation of the same name emerged.
  • Mine, a town that does have things of geological interest including a cave system and karst landscape, but no mining and the town isn't the property of just one person.
  • Naruto, whose name has been appropriated by the anime franchise and its main character.
  • Obama (meaning "little beach"), mildly famous as it shares its name with the 44th U.S. president.
  • Toyota, Aichi, renamed after the Toyota Motor Corporation.
  • Usa, a city in Ōita Prefecture about 700 km (430 mi) from Obama, and known for the "Made in Usa (Japan)" myth.

Kazakhstan edit

 
Oral railway station. One of the Trans-Siberian's southern siblings passes through here
  • Oral, a major city in the western part of the country near the Russian border, founded by the Cossacks as Uralsk after the nearby river and mountain range—the current name is a local rendering of this original name.

Malaysia edit

  • Air Itam (pronounced "eye EE-tahm" and meaning "Black Water"), also not an airline, but a town.

Mongolia edit

Myanmar edit

  • Insein is a township across the Hlaing River from Yangon. If you are taken there, you probably won't be crazy, but you could be in trouble, as the Insein Prison has been notorious for the detention of political prisoners under harsh conditions.
  • Ye should know that this is also the name of a small town on the Ye River in Southeastern Myanmar.

Pakistan edit

  • Swat – a valley in the northwest of the country.

Philippines edit

  • Antique – a province on the island of Panay.
  • Negros (pronounced negg ross) – the fourth-largest and third-populous island in the Philippines. The island was named by Spanish colonizers after the dark-skinned natives.

Russia edit

  • Asbest, about 30 km northeast of Yekaterinburg, is indeed next to a large asbestos mine just like the town in Quebec described below.

Thailand edit

  • Bangkok — capital of Thailand. Its 168-letter long official name - Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit - means "City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra's behest" and is recorded as the world's longest place name by Guinness World Records.
    • Bang Sue — a district of the capital, location of the new main railway station.
  • Hang Chat — a town in the Northern River Valleys, not a place for people to hang up their Zooms.
  • Phuket — infamous for suffering from the 26 December 2004 tsunami, and a popular destination for sexual reassignment surgery. The initial consonant is actually pronounced as an aspirated "p".
  • U-Tapao — Star Wars fans will recognize this name. Unfortunately, it is not an entire planet but a former American air base during the Vietnam War, now used by the Thai navy, and as a public airport serving Pattaya and Rayong

Turkey edit

 
Batman airport. And, doesn't the shadow of the lamppost on the wall very remotely resemble a round logo with a bat inside..?

The bird was named after the country, not the other way around.

  • Batman — not exactly Gotham, but rather a dull hub for the oil drilling operations nearby
  • Side, resort town and historical ruins, so indeed a place with many sides to it
  • Van, a city on the shore Lake Van, established long before motorized vehicles were invented.

Turkmenistan edit

Uzbekistan edit

  • Pop, formerly named Bob (which, in turn, is the Arabic for gate)

Vietnam edit

  • Hue, the colorful former imperial capital.
  • My Son, yet another world heritage listed archaeological site. No other places that appear to be named after relatives are found nearby, though the IATA code of the closest major airport (in Da Nang) is DAD.
  • Cu Chi Tunnels — don't worry, these are not tunnels for you to get tickled in. Rather, it was a base for southern communists during the Vietnam War that has now been converted to a tourist attraction. Beware of booby traps though, as they were used to great effect against the American soldiers, though these days, they are clearly marked for you to see.

Europe edit

 
Austria's most frequently stolen sign

Andorra edit

  • Pal is a great place to go skiing during winter, mate.

Austria edit

  • Fugging (rhymes with "booking"), a village of 100 inhabitants near Salzburg, changed its name from Fucking (in 2021) to stop visitors from stealing the "Fucking" sign. About 70 km to the northeast you can find the villages of Oberfucking and Unterfucking. Kissing and Petting are also nearby, and listed under #Germany below.
  • Hatting, Tyrol, there is also one in Denmark and Upper Austria.
  • Poggersdorf, a city near Klagenfurt

Belarus edit

Belgium edit

  • Don't get your hop(e)s up for Beerse (near Turnhout), it has no bars. Similarly, tucked in between Brussels and Halle, you will find a Lot, but sadly there's no bars in Beersel either.
  • Erps-Kwerps has gotten its name from two similarly named towns that merged into one.
  • Ham, a municipality containing within it Kwaadmechelen, which translates as "Evil Mechelen". It's not certain whether this label as evil is the result of beef between it and Ham.
  • Jezus-Eik (Jesus-Oak) near Overijse is quite literally named for an oak tree which was said to have healing powers. despite being named for Jesus, it was a statue of his mother that gave said oak its powers. The French therefore named it Notre-Dame-au-Bois (Our-Lady-of-the-Woods).
  • Should you ever want to rob a bank in a Flemish sea-side town, Heist-aan-Zee (Heist-on-Sea) does seem to be asking for it.
  • With Silly, the region of Hainaut has a fairly strong claim for the silliest placename in all of Belgium.
  • Spermalie in West-Flanders is a village in which people don't actually believe in any such lie.
  • Being somewhat overshadowed for the battle that saw an end to Napoleon's reign, and the ABBA song about said battle, one would almost forget that Waterloo is simply quite funny of a name in English.

Bulgaria edit

  • Sofia, indeed named after a lady; the city is named after St Sofia church in the city, in turn named after Sophia the Martyr.

Croatia edit

  • Krk, an island in the Adriatic Sea, with a town with the same name.
  • Split, a historic seaside city in Dalmatia. The city is not split into parts, but the city of Dubrovnik at the Southeast direction is indeed split away from Mainland Croatia by the Bosnian city of Neum.

Denmark edit

Dubbed in various surveys and polls throughout the years as the "happiest country in the world", here you can find Lol-land and Fun-en, as well as many more towns we could have Listed.

Finland edit

  • Ii, this town in northwestern Finland has the shortest name in the country.
  • Nokia is the founding place of the former telecommunications giant (and general "company that makes everything") with the same name. However, their telecommunications products were never produced in the city.
  • Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä is a bog in Savukoski. The name was probably made up by a local frustrated by map makers interrupting their work, but made it to the maps.

France edit

  • Brest, a city in Brittany.
  • Bitche, a town in Grand-Est.
  • Condom, a small town in the department of Gers.
  • Die, a village in Drôme.
  • Mulhouse may be appreciated by visitors from Springfield.
  • Nancy, a medium-sized city in Grand-Est
  • Nice (pronounced much like English "niece"), a seaside city that's almost certainly the most popular destination on this list
  • Tours, a city in the Loire Valley. A little road train and a horse and carriage both tour the city.
  • Y – a hamlet in the Somme forever questioning its existence. Inhabitants of Y are called Ypsiloniens.

Germany edit

 
Bathing at the Caracalla Therme spa in Baden-Baden
  • Assmannshausen, a town in Hesse
  • Baden-Baden, translates to Bathing-Bathing, and it is a very longstanding spa town. Many German towns have "Bad" names; that doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad places as their names translate to "bath".
  • Hamm has nothing to do with ham, but is rather an industrial city in the Ruhr.
  • Kissing, a town near Augsburg, Bavaria
  • Petting, a small town in Bavaria
  • Titisee – lake and spa-town in the Black Forest
  • Worms (starts with a V sound and rhymes with dorms)- an important city during medieval times. There was an important Imperial Diet here, the Diet of Worms.

Greece edit

  • Ia, also known as "Oia", a town on the island of Santorini

Hungary edit

  • The pronunciation of Pécs (PEH-ch) sounds suspiciously like the English word for a female dog.

Iceland edit

Ireland edit

Italy edit

  • Bra, a town in Piedmont, not the home to underwear but to the Slow Food movement and the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

Netherlands edit

 
When you enter Enter, enter via one of these entering Enter signs.
 
Grave does feature a Jewish cemetery, among others
  • America, northwest of Venlo, has surprisingly little in common with the continents across the Atlantic Ocean – including Holland (Michigan).
  • Best, north of Eindhoven is arguably the best place in the Netherlands.
  • Enter about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) south of Rectum.
  • Goes isn't known to have any plans to go anywhere else but Zeeland, where it already is.
  • Grave isn't as dead as the name might make you think. The fortified city centre isn't the youngest either, being some 800 years old.
  • De Hulk in North Holland is not affiliated to the Marvel character.
  • Leek is in Westerkwartier (or is it in Staffordshire, England?) and possibly the vegetable is grown there too.
  • Monster is 13.5 kilometres (8.4 mi) southwest of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
  • Made is a place near Breda that surprisingly was made at some point in time. In Dutch the name translates to maggot.
  • Rectum about 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) South of Wierden, but isn't as shitty as it may sound.
  • Wierden (pronounced as weird-n) 5 km West of Almelo.

Norway edit

  • Å (meaning "river"), on the island of Moskenesøya – one of several places called "Å".
  • Hardanger, a traditional region in Western Norway, and really nothing that would infuriate you.
  • Hell (from the Old Norse word for "overhang"), a village in Trøndelag just south of Trondheim Airport.
  • Marker is a town where 3,400 Norwegian citizens have marked their home.
  • Ski, deriving its name not from a "ski" (which itself is a Norwegian loanword), but rather from an Old Norse word meaning "horse racing track".
  • Telemark, a county in East Norway. No worries, nobody will try to mark your phone here.
  • Tonnes is a strong contestant for the heaviest postal code, weighing in at 8750 Tonnes.

Poland edit

  • Baby — a small village in Łódzkie Voivodeship.
  • Police – a town in West Pomeranian Voivodeship, name of the town comes from the Slavic pole, which means "field".
  • Puck – a city in Pomorskie, unclear if they have an ice hockey team. Just across the Puck Bay, you can find the town of Hel.

Spain edit

  • The name of Barcelona's airport - El Prat - is amusing to Brits, though in Catalan simply means "The Meadow".
  • Roses, a city in Catalonia.

Switzerland edit

  • Grandson, a town at Lake Neuchatel, just north of Yverdon.

Ukraine edit

  • Bile is the only settlement on Snake Island, Odesa Oblast. Indeed a bitter place for the Russian military to stay.
  • New York or Нью-Йорк as rendered in Cyrillic is a village in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast. It reverted to its original name, which is supposedly for the American wife of one of the founders, in 2021 after more than one and a half centuries under other names.

United Kingdom edit

England edit

  • Bath, indeed a historic Roman spa city.
  • Battle, on the site of the Battle of Hastings.
  • Beer a town whose name comes not from the alcoholic beverage but from the Old English word bearu, meaning forest.
  • Butt Lane, a village in North Staffordshire whose name seems amusing to Americans.
  • Dorking, in Surrey, England.
  • Enfield on the northern edge of London has areas called Freezy Water, Ponders End, Turkey Street and World's End.
  • The name of Eye, Suffolk means island.
 
It does exist!
  • Fakenham, a real market town in Norfolk.
  • Gotham (pronounced "GO-tam"), a village in Nottinghamshire where Batman doesn’t live. The name originates from the Old English for goat. It's also known for men wise enough to appear foolish to prevent a monarch visiting.
  • Gravesend, Kent. Folk etymology suggests a connection with the Black Death, during which London's cemeteries were overwhelmed. Sadly, the name predates the arrival of Bubonic plague in Europe by several centuries, and was first recorded as Gravesham, which is Anglo-Saxon for "something too boring to translate."
  • The Lizard, a peninsula that contains Britain's southernmost point. Its name comes from the Cornish Lys Ardh ("High Court"), so nothing to do with reptiles; the fact the peninsula is mostly made of serpentinite rock is purely coincidental.
  • The Cornish village of Minions was subject to an online petition to permanently decorate its welcome sign with the animated yellow cuties.
  • Mousehole (pronounced "MOWS-ul"), described as "the loveliest village in England."
  • Nowhere, marshy area by the River Bure near the village of Acle, Norfolk.
  • Penistone (pronounced "PEN-is-stone"), a town north-west of Sheffield, confusing automated censoring algorithms to this day.
  • Potters Bar, a town in Hertfordshire.
  • Pratt's Bottom, in the arse-end of Greater London.
  • The River Otter in Devon is better known for its beavers.
  • Rock, Cornwall.
  • Sale, a suburb of Manchester, surprisingly "not normally thought of as a shopping destination" - not to be confused with Sale (Victoria).
  • Sandwich in Kent. John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, devised the sandwich as a piece of salt beef between two slices of toasted bread.
  • Scunthorpe had problems in 1996 with creating accounts with AOL.
  • Shitterton, Dorset. Perhaps the British equivalent of the former Fucking and Bullshit Hill.
  • Ware, a common joke is to ask "where are you from", you get "Ware", "Where?", "Ware!, W-A-R-E". Cold Christmas and Nasty are nearby.
  • Westward Ho! is not really interesting enough to merit an exclamation mark.
  • Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, the shortest street in York, means "What a street!", suggesting medieval Yorkies were easily impressed.

Northern Ireland edit

Scotland edit

  • Butt of Lewis, the northern headland of Lewis. Many visitors assume they are the first to ask "And who is Lewis?"
  • Dollar is 13 miles east of Stirling. While you're there, take in the Yetts of Muckart.
  • Dull, a village in Perth and Kinross, forms the "League of Extraordinary Communities" with Boring, Oregon USA and Bland, Australia.
  • Geo of Jibidi, Twatt, Piers of Frustigarth, and so on: the Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands have dozens of weird Norse names. Shapinsay has a rich collection, and locating them is about the most fun you can have on that island.
  • Skye is under the same sky with the rest of Scotland.
  • Twatt, a village on the Orkney Islands whose residents are more pleasant than the name suggests, also one in the Shetland Islands.

Wales edit

  • Devil's Bridge has three bridges stacked on top of each other, one of which is said to have been built by the Devil
  • Mountaineers in the Brecon Beacons will be relieved to know that Fan-y-Big is beyond the reach of Lord Hereford's Knob.
  • Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – longest place name in Europe. In Welsh, its name means "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the church of St. Tysilio near the red cave".
  • Mold – Though the fungus is spelt "mould" in British English, Mold is pronounced exactly the same. Its Welsh name Yr Wyddgrug would have probably replaced "Mold" by now were it easier for English speakers to pronounce.

Islands of the Atlantic Ocean edit

North America edit

  • There are at four towns called Eureka: one in Canada, and three in the United States.

Canada edit

 
Overlooking the Bay of Islands, Blow Me Down Provincial Park
  • Asbestos, a town in Quebec, home to what was once the world's largest asbestos mine. In October 2020, the town voted to change its name to "Val-des-Sources".
  • Blow-Me-Down Mountains and Blow Me Down Provincial Park, Lark Harbour near Corner Brook. Western Newfoundland is exposed to the open Gulf of St. Lawrence, where it gets windy enough to stunt the growth of trees near the shoreline. A few places are named "blow me down"; the Newfies are not joking. At the top of a mountain? It only gets windier.
  • Dildo. One of many unique Newfoundland toponyms such as Ass Rock, Come by Chance, Pushthrough, Tickle Bay and Spread Eagle Island... not to mention Witless Bay. Gayside renamed itself Baytona. A few communities have charming names like Paradise or Heart's Content.
  • Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, near Fort Macleod, Alberta. Local natives were prone to herding buffalo off a cliff; one happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time and the rest is UNESCO-listed history.
  • Hell's Gate, a narrow point on British Columbia's Fraser River, is beyond Hope... by about 69 km (43 mi).
  • Horsefly Lake Provincial Park and the nearby town of Horsefly, in British Columbia.
  • Medicine Hat, Alberta. It's named after a native word, saamis, that translates to Medicine Man's Hat.
  • Mistaken Point on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. Mistaking this southernmost point for the point of Cape Race, a common navigational error, could lead a ship onto the rocks.
  • Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Possibly comes from moose gaw, which means "warm breezes" in Cree.
  • Newfoundland outports are prone to names like Joe Batt's Arm or Squid Tickle, but these are geographic features; an "arm" is a narrow extension, inlet, or reach from a much larger body of water while a "tickle" is a short narrow strait.
  • Nipissing in Northeastern Ontario is just a small town used as a base to explore Algonquin Provincial Park. Not known for what you're probably thinking.
  • Road to Nowhere, at the edge of Iqaluit, Baffin Island. There is no intercity road access to Nunavut. Iqaluit, on Frobisher Bay, is no exception.
  • In the Innu-aimun language, Sheshatshit means “a narrow place in the river”. The community, about 20 mi (32 km) beyond Goose Bay, Labrador on paved road, is inhabited by the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation – who pronounce this "Sheshajeet".
  • On the Trans-Canada Highway, there's a Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec.
  • Swastika is a small 1908-era mining community near Kirkland Lake in northern Ontario. When World War II broke out, the locals insisted they had the name first, Hitler be damned, and stubbornly refused to change it. A town in New York State also bears the same name and refused to change their name.
  • Wawa is a notorious hitchhiker trap on the Trans-Canada Highway. Assuming you get a ride out of town, you can go a couple of days on that highway to Petawawa.
  • Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik — Longest place name in Canada, referring to a lake in Manitoba. The name means "where the wild trout are caught by fishing with hooks" in the indigenous Cree language.
  • Wreckhouse, at the southern end of the Long Range Mountains (20km NW of Port aux Basques) in western Newfoundland, is subject to near hurricane-force winds on the open Gulf of St. Lawrence; the narrow-gauge Newfoundland Railway had long posted a lookout at this point as the high winds could knock the train off the track. While the railway is long gone, this area still poses a risk of toppling heavy goods vehicles on the Trans-Canada Highway during harsh wind storms.

Caribbean edit

 
The yacht Granma on display, not in Granma but in Havana
  • Granma, a province in Cuba. Like the Communist newspaper, it's named after the yacht Fidel Castro and other revolutionaries sailed from Mexico to Cuba. The yacht, in turn, was named after the original (American) owner's grandmother.
  • Hell, a small community in the Cayman Islands
  • Morón in Cuba is likely inhabited by people just as smart as anyplace else
  • Several towns in Jamaica have unusual names, such as Rest-and-Be-Thankful, Me-No-Sen-You-No-Come, Bad Times, Broke Neck Gully, Half Way Tree, Putogether Corner, Dump, and Shambles.

United States edit

American cities and settlements often copy their name from other existing cities or even countries, so don't be surprised if your home town/country becomes the name of a U.S. city.

  • Aloha, Oregon (and not Hawaii) however it is pronounced Uh-LO-uh though.
  • Atlantic City - no, not the one in New Jersey; Atlantic City in landlocked Wyoming, some 2000 miles from its ocean namesake.
  • Bath, Maine (and its postal abbreviation "BATH ME")
  • Bend, Oregon
  • Boring, Oregon (and its twin town, Dull, Scotland!)
  • Captain Cook, Hawaii
  • Carpinteria, California. It's not clear whether they also have carpenters from Nazareth.
  • Celebration, Florida. It was designed by the Walt Disney Company to be a "perfect community".
  • Charm is a charming Amish community in Ohio where an influx of visitors is an unfortunate intrusion.
  • Chicken, Alaska was named for ptarmigan, a bird hunted locally as food. Apparently "chicken" was easier to spell. No town twinning with Hahn, Germany (which means "cockerel").
  • Christmas is in Florida. Other seasonal-themed U.S. postmarks include tiny Antler (South Dakota), a Santa Claus (Indiana) and a pair of Bethlehems (New Hampshire and another in Pennsylvania). The former Pennsylvania steel-making town was founded on Christmas Eve.
  • Cockroach Bay Preserve in Ruskin, Florida
  • Coolville, Ohio, neighboring towns include Torch and Frost.
  • Crow Agency, Montana. A small town in Custer Country. Croak
  • Deadhorse, a town at the end of the icy Dalton Highway, attracts a stubborn few prospectors for black gold who didn't get cold feet and turn back at Coldfoot, 240 mi (390 km) of Alaska wilderness ago.
  • Devil's Elbow is a tiny Route 66 community named for a particularly awkward bend in Missouri's Big Piney River.
  • Flushing, New York appears in children's potty-training book The Saddest Toilet In The World. In the story, the unhappy toilet runs away to seek solace in Flushing Meadows.
  • Frostproof, Florida is indeed named so because it (almost) never experiences frost.
  • Gay, Michigan is a former mining village on the Keweenaw Peninsula, named for the mine's director Joseph E. Gay. There's little here, other than a bar which has taken the name of the town and a Gay Parade on the 4th of July.
  • Gig Harbor, Washington (state) doesn't have any live music venues listed yet.
  • Gobbler's Knob - a hill near Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicts the weather
  • Halfway, Oregon was named for being halfway between two other Baker County (Oregon) towns.
 
The country store in Hell, Michigan features some "hellish" signs
 
Interstate exit to Truth or Consequences
  • Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, formerly known as "Hot Springs" but renamed after a TV show.
  • Twinsburg, an outer Cleveland suburb midway to Akron, hosts an annual Twins Day Festival which draws thousands of siblings (and a few scientific researchers) from around the world.
  • Unalaska is actually in Alaska.
  • Utopia, Ohio, a town built on religious prophesies, it was destroyed by a terrible flood.
  • Wall, South Dakota – remarkably no Trump campaign event has ever been held there
  • Walla Walla, Washington, in the heart of wine country and a popular stop for people in the area
  • Weed, California – named after a person, not a plant. The plant is nevertheless legal there after legalization in California.
  • Wiki Peak, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Nothing related to Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia projects.
  • Woody, California (pop 135) is 25 mi (40 km) NNE of Bakersfield; Pixar's namesake "Toy Story" character appeared briefly as the town's picture postmark in August 2011.
  • Yolo County, home to Davis, California. You only live once.
  • Zap, North Dakota, for people who played "Zip Zap Zop" until they were 18.
  • Zzyzx, California, a small unincorporated area in the Mojave Desert. Also the place where the film Zzyzzx Road was filmed, which cost $1.2 mi USD and only made $30 USD. That's less than a kid's lemonade stall.

Central America edit

Oceania edit

Australia edit

  • Christmas Island, an external territory about 500 km southwest from Indonesia gets very festive for the Christmas season, but it is much more known for its red crab migration.
  • McDonald Islands, a subantarctic island named after the sailor who discovered the island, and has nothing done with the American fast food chain.

Australian Capital Territory edit

  • Bogan Place and Big Bogan

New South Wales edit

 
This way to Wagga Wagga

Northern Territory edit

  • Aaaa Road- possibly named after Aaaa topic widely described in Uncyclopedia but the road looks more like chicken scratch rather than a road
  • Bubble Bubble'
  • Humpty Doo
  • Rum Jungle

Queensland edit

South Australia edit

Tasmania edit

  • Boomers Bottom
  • Broad Bottom
  • Deep Bottom
  • Grassy Bottom
  • Long Bottom
  • Lovely Bottom
  • Officers Bottom
  • Prickly Bottom
  • Round Bottom
  • Stumpys Bottom – ...as you can see from the last several place names, someone in Tasmania once had an obsession with bottoms
  • The Edge of the World – while we all know that the earth is a sphere and not flat, if you sail in a straight direction, the next place you'll hit is South America, over a world away
  • Eggs and Bacon Bay
  • Nowhere Else
  • Penguin – popular for the Big Penguin
  • Snug, part of the Greater Hobart region
  • Travellers Rest a few kilometres west of Launceston – not many facilities here, though

Victoria edit

  • Bright – an unusually, uhm... not so bright town.
  • Mount Buggery
  • Mount Disappointment – it was named as such because the first Europeans to hike to the top were disappointed that their views down below were obstructed by trees
  • Mount Ugly - A mountain peak in Mount Hooghly
  • Sale - surprisingly not the only town with the name Sale
  • Tinklers Hill
  • Upendowns, Mornington Peninsula

Western Australia edit

French Polynesia edit

Kiribati edit

  • Kiritimati is an island where London, Paris and Poland are neighbouring settlements. Also the island's main airport is at a settlement named Banana.

Micronesia edit

New Zealand edit

  • Whakapapa - Since "wh" in Māori is pronounced similar to an English "f", and the "a" in Maori is pronounced as in British "tap", use your imagination to figure out what the name actually sounds like.
  • Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu (which is Maori for "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his kōauau to his loved one"), a hill in Hawke's Bay, North Island, and the longest single-word place name in the world.
  • Te Puke - if you dislike kiwifruits more than anything else in the world, there's perhaps a risk you will throw up here; the town is the centre of an industry which supplies a large percentage of the total world production of the fruit.
  • Doubtful Sound - a fiord where perhaps you'll hear some funny things when you're exploring it in its solitude by kayak.

South America edit

 
View of Lake Titicaca
  • Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable body of water in the world, shared between Bolivia and Peru.
  • There are several places called Mercedes in South America, albeit no Benz.

Brazil edit

  • Acre is a Brazilian state that has an area of over 37 million acre.
  • Bananal, a village in the state of São Paulo.
  • Fordlândia was founded by the Ford company as a rubber plantation, abandoned long before synthetic rubber supplanted natural rubber in World War II.
  • Presidente Prudente is not called "cautious president", but is actually named after Prudente de Morais, third President of Brazil.
  • Uberlândia and Uberaba, cities in Triângulo Mineiro, and you can get around by Uber taxi.

Chile edit

Colombia edit

  • Turbo, a small city. You can get here by fast boats featuring "concussion-inducing bumps as the launch jumps the waves".

Ecuador edit

Guyana edit

Peru edit

This travel topic about Places with unusual names is a usable article. It touches on all the major areas of the topic. An adventurous person could use this article, but please feel free to improve it by editing the page.
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