Strange Place Names

IdleRich

IdleRich
A sort of companion piece to - what is almost universally acknowledged to be the greatest sequence of posts ever on dissensus - the unfortunate names thread.

However, so it's not just a mindless rip-off of that, I'd like to give it a different emphasis. I'm interested less in foreign names that sound like a vulgarity in English - Twatt or Bangkok etc - than ones that really are strange in the local language and which make you wonder how they came about and even if living there now is affected.
For eg Satan's Kingdom in the US


is that not a problem for certain people if you tell them you live in Satan's Kingdom?

In the UK you have Westward Ho! which I think is the only name featuring a punctuation mark as part of it. Or certainly it was at one point. It's named after a book, but to me that just raises more questions, how did it come about that they suddenly decided to name themselves after a book? Why did they do that... and, out of all the books that exist, why that one?

And very similar questions come to mind with Truth or Consequences in New Mexico which suddenly decided to change its name to that of a radio show.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
So that's actually quite a common name in fact with two villages having it. I believe actually that that's where Memorable Factor in the Unfortunate Names thread originated - Memorable Factor from New Invention.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
This thread definitely feels like an unpopular younger brother to the people's names one - a red-headed stepchild of a thread if you will - but this is a good one.

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