Wikipedia talk:Unusual place names

Suggestion for improvement
This page could be formatted better. A style similar to the one used in Unusual articles would be a great improvement. -- &oelig; &trade; 06:52, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks go to User:Dream out loud for formatting it as a wikitable. -- &oelig; &trade; 08:05, 6 October 2010 (UTC)


 * To make this look better, I have put the long placenames into their own list at the end (to solve the problem that the long names throw out the table formatting). Nick4mony (talk) 12:11, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Don't put a main space cat on a WPspace page
Why not? Why can't I? If there's a rule preventing me from doing this then in this case I choose to ignore it, for the simple fact that it improves the encyclopedia. Would you not agree that readers perusing that category would want to also find this page? It helps our readers. What's your rationale for keeping it out? consistency? In this case I disagree that that should take priority over making it easy for our readers to find information. -- &oelig; &trade; 01:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Well then there's no arguing with you, is there. You're obviously right, I'm obviously wrong. I bow to you, o master of knowledge. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:10, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Heheh :) -- &oelig; &trade; 06:29, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Wee Waa?
OK, so Wee Waa is a bit of an odd name - but how did someone add that but miss Baan Baa (roughly 45 minutes from Wee Waa). Unlike Wee Waa, Baan Baa is pronounced as people expect - like the noise sheep make. Or is it simply not on the list because it doesn't have a Wikipedia page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.70.76.248 (talk) 11:29, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Cărpeniș River
How is this funny? I fail to see the joke. Epicgenius (give him tirade • check out damage) 02:36, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Grand Teton National Park
Is this funny? I must be missing something. 155.213.224.59 (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Flushing, New York
How about Flushing, New York, surely that is a funny/ unusual place name — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.20.130.141 (talk) 10:04, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Added. Thanks :) &mdash;  Rickyrab. Yada yada yada 04:07, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

"Apalpacoños", "Cunt feeler"?
In the city I live, León, Spain, there once was a street called "calle apalpacoños", which literally means "cunt feeler street". You can guess what kind of business established there. Even during Franco's dictatorship, the street kept its name (although the regime being absolutely religious and considering that a taboo), they only changed the street's name in maps (it kept the same plaque), so it became "calle apalpa c.", "c. feeler street". The name kept the same until the 90's when they decided to give it the less offensive name of "el barranco" ("the cliff", due to the fact it was a very steep street). It has no name, nowadays, and they just call it calle Don Gutierre, because it's next to the homonymous square, in which there's the palace of said Don Gutierre, a Leonese medieval noble. This street was famous due to the story of one famous drunkard in León called Genarín, worshipped as a parody of a saint (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genar%C3%ADn). Here you have an article about the street. I'm sorry, but all of my sources are in Spanish. http://www.diariodeleon.es/noticias/leon/entorno-calle-llamada-apalpaconos_64862.html

Deleted "Bastard", Norway
The entry claimed "Bastard" was a town in "Tromsø". Tromsø is itself a city. There is a pub in Tromsø called "Bastard", but a thorough search through Norwegian maps reveals no place name as such. The closest one gets is "Båstad", southeast of Oslo. And indeed, as bastard means the same in Norwegian as it does in English, it is an unlikely place name. Tsuka (talk) 12:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Feb 2016 proposal
This article should be merged with Place names considered unusual. Come discuss this there. — LLarson &#160; (said&#8239;&#38;&#8239;done) 03:09, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Feb 2017 proposal
I think that List of places with numeric names should be merged into this one. This article already has a section on numeric names, so there is no necessity on having two articles with the same material. 1618033  golden   c0ntr1b5 21:57, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. IMO, List of places with numeric names fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and would likely be deleted if nominated for WP:AFD - but the entries on it would fit well into this quirky page. Narky Blert (talk) 22:35, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. What makes a numeric place name unusual? I don't think a list that has some value should be merged with this Wikipedia namespace joke page. --Avg W (talk) 00:49, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Kurwa
Kurwa is a village in India. Incidentally, its name means 'prostitute' in Polish and it is a common interjection, meaning 'f**k' or 'damn'. While the English Wikipedia has no article on the village itself (the Polish wiki does have under pl:Kurwa (dystrykt Dumka)), there's the article on the Kurwa railway station on the English wiki. Niobian (talk) 06:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Ethnocentrism
I'm shocked by the ethnocentrism of many of these entries. I'm referring to entries of foreign places that happen to resemble obscenities in English. I would imagine that some people from those countries would feel insulted by having English speakers making jokes of their place names -- and in an encyclopedia, no less. Fun is one thing, but fun at others' expense is something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hirschjoshua (talk • contribs) 03:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Well good thing this isn't actually in the encyclopedia, then. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:23, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Did you just say that Wikipedia isn't an "actual" encyclopedia?rowley (talk) 09:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Well I didn't 'just' say what I wrote, but I didn't say that. I was talking about the fact that THIS page isn't part of the encyclopedia, it's part of the 'Wikipedia' space, i.e. this isn't an actual article so it doesn't actually need to have sourcing etc (despite it having so). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:27, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * What is your problem? We make fun of your places, you can make fun of other place names. i don't see the problem at all. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 03:27, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Removal of places with no articles
I noticed that Dead Road (in North Carolina) and Gays Row (in Virginia) were removed from the list that I posted months ago, which both have no Wikipedia articles associated with them. With that mentioned, I noticed new roads with no associated articles such as Bugs Bunny Lane (in North Carolina) and Daffy Duck Road (in Kentucky) recently added to the list. A couple of others with no associated articles which have been on the list are still there. So...I'd like to know what the deal is here regarding posting unusual locations on this list that have no Wikipedia articles? Thanks. Mld74 (talk) 02:23, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I just removed those (and a bunch of other entries with no article). There are no rules here, I suppose, being in project space, but it is a terribly long list already, so we should probably keep it to places with articles. Eman  235 / talk  21:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion/descriptions
Hi! This page has gotten really long and many of the additions are not particularly funny. I propose we come up with some semblance of criteria for inclusion (rather than this just being a free-for-all), and some kind of standard for descriptions (like not racist). I've been removing items that are in a language other than English and mean something funny in a different language other than English (like a Spanish place that means something funny in Latvian). Things that sound funny in English or mean something funny in their native language should stay. I've also been paring down the descriptions, as a lot of them are beyond crude, to the point of being racist at times. Input appreciated. Thanks! WMSR (talk) 21:25, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge is called red stick because that is where the Native Indians and the French Immigrants fought against each other, and the stick that they used as a truce had half Indian blood and half immigrant blood. The stick is long gone now. --246700Sarhan (talk) 19:39, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Natters and Mutters?
Natters and Mutters are neighbouring villages in Austria.--Shantavira|feed me 12:07, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Funny?
In 14 year on WP, I had never before encountered a "fun" page, except those in User space. I did not notice the banner at the top, which was much too inconspicuous to alert me that I was not in article space. I got here from a google search while looking for actual information, which seems to comprise the majority of the list entries, and none of the comments intended to be funny struck me as such, so I automatically corrected an error (the power of habit).--WriterArtistDC (talk) 16:16, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Attribution?
Some of the entries here look to be lifted from Wikivoyage without attribution. For instance, claims that Aloha is "in Oregon, not Hawaii", that Best "is arguably the best place in the Netherlands", that "It's not clear whether" Carpinteria, California would "also have carpenters from Nazareth" among others. Certainly the claim that Hicksville doesn't have "any of that newfangled indoor plumbing like they got in Flushing" was there (in 2017) before it was here (in 2019). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.237.88.83 (talk) 23:13, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Airdrie
Is pronounced Air-dree, not Air-dry, so the joke isn't immediately clear to most people in Scotland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:4C8:148C:5735:59AD:AE3D:D40C:9B57 (talk) 13:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Kecskemét
A city in Hungary. Translates as "goats walking" in Hungarian.

This is a complete bogus, kecske means goat (not goats) indeed, but mét has nothing to do with walking or going, but it meant 'dried river bed' centuries ago. Pasztilla (talk) 21:26, 9 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I've had trouble figuring out the "mét" part of the name too; the page for it says it means "mountain pass" but I've seen sources that the name came from "district" as well; I've genuinely no clue, given that it doesn't exist in modern Hungarian, and if it does, it has to be rather rare. Adrmcr (talk) 20:31, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Tongil Station
According to the last known picture of this station, only 역 is shown in place of an actual name, so the "name" part may qualify as the shortest place name in the world at 0 letters. OosakaNoOusama (talk) 03:23, 7 June 2024 (UTC)