If the Yanks think our place names sound strange

[Panic Button]

Like Loughborough, Edinburgh and Leicester, then how do the explain Kansas and Arkansas?

[Clanad]

If that's not bad enough, Arkansas has towns named Toad Suck, Turkey Scratch, Bald Knob and Yellville, while Kansas has Beaver, Buttermilk, Cuba and Denmark... Of course not to be out done is my home State with Crazy Woman, Baggs, Chugwater and Meeteetse (Muhteatsy) Very colorful, don't you think?

[AniaSM]

Then theres Lake Disappointment in Western Australia. I want to go there. Why? Dunno.

[Panic Button]

My favourite name is Woolloomooloo, in Sydney

[joko]

i think most of those place names are native american, like iowa, idaho etc etc etc.

many of our town names have another in the us.

new york, birmimgham, liverpool, etc

[fairkatrina]

Basically Americans are unimaginative. Either their places are named after places in other parts of the world (Birmingham, Manchester, New York, New Orleans etc) or they are Native American names, or they are repetitive (who needs two Dakotas???)

[Thicko2006]

Come to Western Australia - we have some beauties -

Mundijong, Jerramungup, Koolyanobbing, Tom Price, Manjimup, Boyup Brook, Widgiemooltha, Yarloop and loads more.

[Clanad]

Can't help but respond to the fairkatrina that the people responsible for the unimaginative naming were, for the most part English... if not totally, certainly European at least...

[stewey]

Excellent, Clanad..........and accomplished in an imaginative manner.

[heathfield]

And there's Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, near Webster, Massachusetts.
Or Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu in New Zealand.

[jno]

New York was named after a man - the Duke of York - rather than the English city.

There's a town in New Zealand called Nonoti. People think it's a Maori word but apparently it derives from an early settler asking a passerby if he knew the name of this place.

[dr john]

The same story has been told at various times about Yucatan in Mexico, and about the word 'kangaroo'. Similarly, Nome in Alaska is supposed to be a misreading of a puzzled cartographer's scrawled '?Name'

(Nice, but probably all untrue.)

[joko]

yes the use of english names in america, was because of the settlers wanting to 'take a piece of home with them', they had to choose something i suppose

[con-amca]

In Wales you'll find this small town:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio
gogogoch (58 letters)

which is Welsh for

"St Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of llantysilio of the red cave"