Café de Nuit

I have read and heard a lot of people complaining about the names of towns and places in Ravenloft.
Well it seems to me there are a lot of places in the real world that have strange names. So I thought we could use this post to list strange place names to show some of the strange ideas people had when naming towns and cities here in the real world.

To start with I will go with the town of Cut and Shoot, Texas. It just sounds like a place adventurers would flock to. After all if the residents are all cutting and shooting, the adventurers will fit right in.


Also in Texas, there is Gun Barrel City.


Cape Fear, North Carolina.


Tombstone, Arizona


Saint Tammany, Louisiana – This one requires a little bit of explanation. There is no Saint Tammany. The place was named by a politician after Tammany Hall in New York City. Tammany Hall was the corrupt political machine of “Boss” Tweet in the middle of the 19th century, and is now synonymous with corrupt politics. So in a way, they “canonized” corrupt politics and named a place after it.


Ok, that is what I have for now. As I come across others I will post them here. Anybody else have any ghoulish, unusual, or just plain strange names to add?

Boneyard, Arizona.
Deadhorse, Eek, and Nightmute, Alaska. (A city named "Eek"? Seriously? That's like a Ravenloft parody town.)
Muck City, Alabama.
Deadwood, Deadman Crossing, Hell's Kitchen, Last Chance, and Hellhole Palms, California.
Hourglass, Connecticut.
Midnight, Mississippi.
Coldwater, Missouri.
Bitterroot, Montana.
Slaughterville, Oklahoma. (Maybe it was a typo of Laughterville.)
Ono, Pennsylvania. (Oh no!)
Little Hope, Texas.
Hurricane, Utah.

Reality is Unrealistic.

Also, for some non-scary but favorite bizarre names, Cheesequake, New Jersey, Idiotville, Oregon, and Whynot, North Carolina.

Here in PA we have-

Ax
Smock
Erie
Intercourse (honestly, a town named intercourse)

Isabella wrote:Hurricane, Utah.

Never heard of that town, and I live in Utah. Plus we've never had a hurricane here. We get a lot of wind but that's because Utah sucks (okay, so I stole that joke from The Red Green Show, sue me).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane,_Utah

*shrug* I didn't name it!

It's not pronounced quite the same as the usual circular storm...it's got the Southern Utah sauce on it. (It's "hurrikin", more or less.)

It's a real place, though. I've been there.

Utah has other weirdly named places (like Zion National Park, which reflects the Mormon belief that the LDS Church is descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel). Most aren't really "scary," just odd in that "uh...huh" kind of way, like Scipio ("sip-EE-oh") or Moab (named after the mountains once called the same in ancient Israel, only the mountains near this Moab are the Rockies).

Nathan of the FoS wrote:It's not pronounced quite the same as the usual circular storm...it's got the Southern Utah sauce on it. (It's "hurrikin", more or less.)

It's a real place, though. I've been there.

"Southern Utah sauce" is one way to put it. The number of Southerners and others with "a Southern drawl" were a huge part of post-Civil War emigres and many Southerners still continue to move here in droves. The state, despite my bashing about its conservative culture and laws (some of which are just plain ass-backwards), it's still one of the best places to live I've ever found. Especially if you live near the Nevada or Wyoming borders so you can get GOOD booze, fireworks, and other things the LDS Church has effectively banned by proxy (read: many voters and politicians here are loyal Mormons, and money talks for those that aren't; the Church has a fortune and isn't afraid to throw it around to get their way).

Hell, Arizona, U.S
Hell, California, U.S
Hell, Michigan, U.S.
Hell, Grand Cayman, the Cayman Islands
Hell, Norway, a village in Stjørdal

There seem to be many hells on earth!

Utah as a territory did at one time allow slavery, but those clever Yankees knew it was so fenced in by geographic barriers and free territories that nobody could really take slaves there, even if they'd wanted to do so. Of course, it's not as if the mountains and deserts of Utah were fertile ground for the Old South's agricultural system.

Oregon, my home state, had quite a mix of settlers. Many came from New England and many came from the Upper South. This had interesting effects on territorial and later, state , politics. We were at one time called a 'Southern state in the extreme Northwest.'

Scipion_Emilien wrote:Hell, Arizona, U.S
Hell, California, U.S
Hell, Michigan, U.S.
Hell, Grand Cayman, the Cayman Islands
Hell, Norway, a village in Stjørdal

There seem to be many hells on earth!

For me, Earth is Hell. Or if you're a Jeff Dunham fan, Santa Anna, CA is Hell (ask Peanut about that).

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Death Valley yet. Or is it too obvious?

There are lots of odd names in the US and Canada inflicted on the geography by early puritans settlers. They didn't just write them on maps - take a look at the names they gave their children.

Nottingham was originally called Snottingham after the saxon chieftain Snot.

Completely wrong era and not a place name but there was a Colonel Richard Geoffrey Pine-Coffin who commanded the 3rd Parachute Battalion in North Africa and the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion in Europe.

Well, so that this is not only anglo-phonic, I can point you to http://gatocomvertigens.com/260000.html
http://www.portugal-tchat.com/forum/dis ... uecer.html.

Of course, that requires translation, so I chose a few and give their meanings here:

Às Dez - At Ten (o'clock)
Bexiga - Bladder
Bicha - several meaning, one of which, in slang, is a term for homossexual
Bicho - some kind of indefinite beast
Cabrão - male goat, but mainly an insult
Cama Porca - dirty bed
Campa do Preto - black man's grave
Cemitério - graveyard
Chiqueiro - pigsty
Coito - intercourse (yes, here too). Could also be a variant of 'couto' which was a property immune from the King's right (in feudal times). Therefore a feud of a noble or of the church.
Coxo - limp
Crucifixo - crucifix
Focinho de cão - dog's muzzle
Garanhão - stallion
Jerusalém do Romeu - Romeo's Jerusalem
Mal Lavada - badly washed
Máquina - machine
Orelhudo - someone with big ears
Quinta de Comichão - rash farm
Rabo de Porco - pig's tail
Traseiros - from the behind, backsides or equivalent
Vale da Rata - female rat's valley (but rat is also a slang for female genitalia)
Venda das Pulgas - tavern of the fleas
Venda das Raparigas - tavern of the girls
Venda dos Pretos - tavern of the black people
Torre Dona Chama - tower of Lady Flame (more or less)
Aldeia do Futuro - future's village
Imaginário - imaginary
Mata Mouros - Moors-killer (Moors as in muslim)
Paitorto - sounds like Pai Torto: bent father (more or less)
Alçáperna - sonds like 'Alça a perna': raise your leg
Pobreza - Poverty
Rego do azar - creek of bad luck
Rio Seco dos Marmelos - dry river of quinces
Vaginha - small pod (but notice the similarity to something else)
Vale de mortos - dead people valley
Violência - violence
Vilar dos Prazeres - hamlet of pleasures
Freixo de espada à cinta - Ash tree with a girted sword: this is a village, and its shield actually depicts a tree with two swords
Salvaterra de Magos - hard one, could be translated as Safe-Land of Magicians, perhaps? But I've always found this name extremely poetic, everytime I saw it on the map on my journeys to the south of the country.

Not very scary but I live about 10 miles from a place called Pratts Bottom...

although I did quake before the terror that is Bunny in Nottinghamshire.

Oh and it seems there is an Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds.

Currently in Mount Pleasant MI where there are no mountains what so ever.

A G Thing wrote:Currently in Mount Pleasant MI where there are no mountains what so ever.

I live in Charleston, just south of Mount Pleasant, which has no mountains and is most unpleasant.