Talk:Place names considered unusual

Should Alcohol and Drug Abuse Lake, South Carolina be added to this list
Should Alcohol and Drug Abuse Lake, South Carolina be added to this list Beastlupikachu (talk) 22:10, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Original research
Large swaths of this article, including most of the "Profane, humorous, and highly charged words" section, is just original research with editors adding names of places that seem to reference charged terms (porn, panties, etc). But there are not citations from reliable sources that indicate these place names are actually considered unusual. Is this article just a dumping ground for anything English speakers find odd? -- Zim Zala Bim talk 04:15, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Of course it's a silly article. But don't try and do anything to challenge the big boys, they'll just ignore you. At best Sirhissofloxley (talk) 23:23, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Update: I've removed sections describing an arbitrary set of "unusually descriptive" and "homonym" names. These are subjective, arbitrary, and probably not that uncommon. No meaningful sources indicated they are particularly "unusual". This is all just original research, and perhaps also only "unusual" if you view them from a particular cultural frame. -- Zim Zala Bim talk 19:56, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Pee Pee Island
I humbly request that Pee Pee Island is added to this list. Thank you. NathanScott97 (talk) 03:05, 26 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Assuming that this is the Pee Pee Island in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, I can't find any news articles that comment on its name. As I understand it, this list should only contain places that are notable for having an unusual name, in the specific sense that there exist independent reliable sources that mention that the name is unusual (and in the case of Pee Pee Island, ideally we would also want some information on how the name came about).
 * That having been said, there is a Pee Pee Township, Ohio that could be added under this criterion, as this article exists. I think I would want to first establish some explicitly-stated criteria for whether a place name should make it onto this article, though. Edderiofer (talk) 07:17, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

in Finland we have a street called Enkelparventie and in English it is roughly the way of an angel swarm. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.158.86.137 (talk) 06:21, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Scope + Criteria
I think it's time we had a discussion/summary on what exactly the scope of this article should be. Having read the talk page archives as well as the deletion nomination archives, it seems the main gripes people have with this article are that the humorous list Unusual place names already exists, and that "unusual" is subjective (and possibly subject to WP:POV).

To deal with the first point, I propose that:


 * This article should be about the different ways in which real place names may be unusual, the ways such unusual names may come about, and the ways such names may impact the lives of the people who live there.
 * The article should also be structured in a similar manner, perhaps with one section explaining the ways that names may be unusual (with "Profane, humorous, and highly charged words", "Name changes", and "Lexically unusual place names" as subsections) and how such names may arise, and another section explaining their consequences (with "Road sign theft" being a subsection of this).
 * It should not be an indiscriminate list of unusual names. Any facet of unusualness of a place name can and should ideally be represented with a small number of examples, probably just one or two.
 * The article should cite sources that speak broadly about unusual place names, their origins, and their effects, instead of only sources that discuss a few specific unusual place names or only sources that merely list a bunch of these names without examining their overall effects.

This way, the article definitely says something different than just "this is a list of unusual place names".

To deal with the second point, I also propose as criteria for inclusion (modelled off the inclusion criteria for List of common misconceptions) that any places included in the article should:


 * be notable for having an unusual name, in the specific sense that some reliable independent source somewhere should have commented on the fact that the name is unusual and why. Ideally, this source should also explain either the origin of the name, or how the name affects the residents of that place (if at all).
 * have a Wikipedia article that notes that its name is unusual, with sources.

(Note that unlike the "common misconceptions" article, the name need not be current, as I propose that this article be in part about the effects of unusual place names, and one of those effects is eventually "the place changes its name".)

This way, we have a reasonable objective criterion for the unusualness of a place name.

Of course, I don't think this proposal is definitive. One big worry I have with it right now is that there may not be any sources that "speak broadly about unusual place names, their origins, and their effects". Actual substantive articles are difficult to find among all the listicles of unusual place names. This editorial, which argues that an unusual name may benefit communities, is sort of the right kind of thing, though it's quite opinionated. Without such sources, we might easily run afoul of WP:SYN/WP:RS.

Still, I hope that this will be a good starting point towards clarifying what exactly the article is about. Please give feedback on this. In particular, I would like to ping @ZimZalaBim and @Elemimele. Edderiofer (talk) 10:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Define "unusual". That's the real problem here. It is a subjective, and often culturally-centric, concept. I really think the proper article would be Places notable for their name, and then need clearly cited examples. -- Zim Zala Bim talk 15:20, 12 October 2022 (UTC)


 * There are a few different things to sort out here. (1) Is the overall subject encyclopaedic? I.e. are there general sources about the general matter of unusual names, or are we reduced to individual sources on individual places. That wasn't quite settled at the no-consensus closure of the fourth deletion debate. I think it's pretty clear that the overall subject exists, based on a google search turning up huge numbers of "The world's strangest and funniest name" articles. They're not great sources, because most of them are some travel site saying "ooh look what we found that made us giggle", but they are secondary and unbiased and suggest that the general concept of funny names exists and people are writing about it. (2) Do we want this article to be an article about the actual subject generally, or a list of places with funny names? I'm not totally convinced that we can write a high-quality general article because although the sources exist, they're not scholarly debates or neutral, they are all the personal giggle-opinions of random journalists. But hey, are we into quality control, or just here to summarise? My personal feeling is that a reasonable compromise would be a list article with a short general introduction. The scope of the general introduction is anything that can be sourced from the introductions to the various sources' lists of what they find amusing or unusual. The question is the remaining list: (3) Do we want it to be a list confined to locations that have an existing article, or do we want to include any location whose name can be shown to be unusual based on a source describing it as such? Luckily, inhabited locations are usually considered notable anyway, so there's not a big difference between the lists. I don't think we should include any location unless there is a source specifically about the unusualness of its name. I don't think the unusualness needs to feature in the independent article on the place (a place might be so, so notable for other reasons that its odd name doesn't merit mention in the main article, or no one has got round to adding it there). I don't think the lack of an article on a place should necessarily stop it from being listed here. If there is nothing to say about a place except that people write about its odd name, you can't write an article about it, but it's still sourced as odd. I'm okay about "Places notable for their name", but not too fussed either way. Elemimele (talk) 11:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Should add Intercourse, Pennsylvania
Should add Intercourse, Pennsylvania 213.57.27.66 (talk) 10:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)