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Wragg said:
Ah, Stoke Poges

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England may not have a birthday, but it does have some cool place names :cool:
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I used to spend hours browsing the AA road atlas looking at local names, almost any part of the country rewards close examination. Some regions have villages that sound like characters in a Victorian novel, others sound like collections of insults, exclamations or afflictions. Here's one that sound like our kind of place, Ampney Crucis, near Cirencester :)

Of course Australia does a good line in funny names too, like Dunedoo, pronounced Dunny-doo. In Australian English a dunny is a toilet.
Wagga Wagga, Gulargambone, Woolloomooloo, Bong Bong (home of the famous race meeting https://www.bongbongprc.com.au/), Tittybong etc.
 
phlebas said:
I used to spend hours browsing the AA road atlas looking at local names, almost any part of the country rewards close examination. Some regions have villages that sound like characters in a Victorian novel, others sound like collections of insults, exclamations or afflictions. Here's one that sound like our kind of place, Ampney Crucis, near Cirencester :)

Of course Australia does a good line in funny names too, like Dunedoo, pronounced Dunny-doo. In Australian English a dunny is a toilet.
Wagga Wagga, Gulargambone, Woolloomooloo, Bong Bong (home of the famous race meeting https://www.bongbongprc.com.au/), Tittybong etc.
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When it comes to races in Australia, the Henley-on-Todd Regatta in Alice Springs has always been my favorite: http://www.australia.com/en-us/places/nt/nt-henley-on-todd.html

I've been to the Alice twice but never at the right time to view the festivities. I heard they cancelled it one year because there was actually water in the river.
 
windar said:
Of course, for town names, there is Fucking, Austria. View attachment 513386 You will all be shocked to hear that the road signs were stolen so often, they had to develop special theft-resistant ones.
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This, from Wikipedia, had me rolling on the floor laughing:

The village is especially popular with British tourists; as a local tour guide explained: "The Germans all want to see Mozart's house in Salzburg; the Americans want to see where The Sound of Music was filmed; the Japanese want Hitler's birthplace in Braunau; but for the British, it's all about Fucking."[12] Augustina Lindlbauer, the manager of an area guesthouse, noted that the area had lakes, forests, and vistas worth visiting, but there was an "obsession with Fucking". Lindlbauer recalled how she had to explain to a British female tourist "that there were no Fucking postcards."[13]
 
Wragg said:
This, from Wikipedia, had me rolling on the floor laughing:

The village is especially popular with British tourists; as a local tour guide explained: "The Germans all want to see Mozart's house in Salzburg; the Americans want to see where The Sound of Music was filmed; the Japanese want Hitler's birthplace in Braunau; but for the British, it's all about Fucking."[12] Augustina Lindlbauer, the manager of an area guesthouse, noted that the area had lakes, forests, and vistas worth visiting, but there was an "obsession with Fucking". Lindlbauer recalled how she had to explain to a British female tourist "that there were no Fucking postcards."[13]
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I don't know of any towns in the US called "Fucking" but I have been to Intercourse, Pennsylvania. It's in the Amish country, just east of the town of Bird-in-Hand and north of Paradise. They do have postcards, T-shirts and other paraphernalia with their town's name on it.

https://lancasterpa.com/intercourse/
 
I think I posted this one years ago. The sign below reads: Please, not so fast.:D
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The UK has its fair share of "naughty" place names:
Bitchfield, Lincolnshire
Crapstone, Devon
Fingeringhoe, Essex
Nasty, Hertfordshire
Penistone, Yorkshire
Rinswell, Yorkshire
Upperthong and Netherthong, Yorkshire; not be confused with Thong, which is in Kent.
Wetwang, Yorkshire (Why are so many of these in Yorkshire? Is it a Viking thing?)
 
There are lots of Scandinavian names in Yorkshire, but actually those ones arent': Penistone (Peningestun in the 12th century) is a secondary name based on Pening, itself formed by Anglo-Saxon speakers from Brythonic penn, a headland. The Thongs were indeed named from long, narrow strips of land, cultivated ridges, but the name reflects OE þwang rather than the Norse cognate þveng. I can’t find a Rinswell in Yorkshire (or anywhere else in England), are you thinking of Rimswell? That’s Old English too, either rima ‘a boundary’ or a personal name Ryme.

As to the others, Bitchfield was Billesfeld in Domesday Book 1086, it became Bilsh-, Bilch-feld in the later middle ages, Bitchfield in modern times: personal name Bille. Crapston wasn't recorded until 1678, then Crap Stone, and may well have meant just what it says. Fingeringhoe is formed with OE hoh meaning a spur of land, Fingeringas was the name of a group of people, literally ones who lived on a 'finger' of land. And Nasty was earlier Astey, 'east enclosure', the N- got added in Middle English atten Astey 'at Astey'.

I've mentioned before the Gropecunt Lanes in York, and there were similar ones in other mediaeval towns.
 
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Eulalia said:
There are lots of Scandinavian names in Yorkshire, but actually those ones arent': Penistone (Peningestun in the 12th century) is a secondary name based on Pening, itself formed by Anglo-Saxon speakers from Brythonic penn, a headland. The Thongs were indeed named from long, narrow strips of land, cultivated ridges, but the name reflects OE þwang rather than the Norse cognate þveng. I can’t find a Rinswell in Yorkshire (or anywhere else in England), are you thinking of Rimswell? That’s Old English too, either rima ‘a boundary’ or a personal name Ryme.

As to the others, Bitchfield was Billesfeld in Domesday Book 1086, it became Bilsh-, Bilch-feld in the later middle ages, Bitchfield in modern times: personal name Bille. Crapston wasn't recorded until 1678, then Crap Stone, and may well have meant just what it says. Fingeringhoe is formed with OE hoh meaning a spur of land, Fingeringas was the name of a group of people, literally ones who lived on a 'finger' of land. And Nasty was earlier Astey, 'east enclosure', the N- got added in Middle English atten Astey 'at Astey'.

I've mentioned before the Gropecunt Lanes in York, and there were similar ones in other mediaeval towns.
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I love it when you talk Old English to me, Eul :D

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Eulalia said:
I can’t find a Rinswell in Yorkshire (or anywhere else in England), are you thinking of Rimswell? That’s Old English too, either rima ‘a boundary’ or a personal name Ryme.

I've mentioned before the Gropecunt Lanes in York, and there were similar ones in other mediaeval towns.
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Yeah, I meant Rimswell. It sounds somewhat suggestive. I don't know what Rinswell would suggest.:doh:

It seems at one time, all the major English cities had a Gropecunt Lane. London; being the largest city; had several. All of them were associated with prostitutes and brothels and all were very busy streets. As Protestant prudery crept in, the names were changed, mostly to some variation of Grape Lane. Except the one in for Oxford, which for some reason became Magpie Lane. I'm wondering if Magpie was local slang for a prostitute.
 
Naraku said:
I'm wondering if Magpie was local slang for a prostitute.
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Could well have been, 'magpie' is well recorded as an uncomplimentary word for us women,
though alluding to our supposed propensity for chattering. The bird itself was just a 'pie' (from Old French, from Latin pica),
the pet-form Mag (for Margaret) got added to distinguish it from the eatable pie - so in a sense,
the birds were named after the chattering women. But in the narrow lane down to Merton College,
the chatterboxes were very likely waiting for customers. ;)

PS I also wonder why it was re-named Grove Street, there certainly wan't any grove there - maybe it was once another Grope Lane?
 
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