Can you imagine giving out your post office address and telling people you live in Little Canada, Minnesota; Free Soil, Michigan; Dummer, New Hampshire; Chugwater, Wyoming; Whynot, North Carolina; What Cheer, Iowa; Toad Suck, Arkansas; Chicken, Alaska or Boring, Oregon? Well, for a handful of Americans, that's their reality.
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Estately created a map to depict the weirdest town names in each U.S. state, and you won't believe some of these. They stretch from Maine to Washington and from California to Florida, with no region of the country having funnier names than the next. We can't just pick on Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia (or scold the unsuspecting residents of Delaware or Vermont) and then call it a day.
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A few cities seem aptly named, like Volcano, Hawaii, but most have us scratching our heads. Ding Dong, Texas: Accident, Maryland, and Coward, South Carolina seem a little bit offensive. Pie Town, New Mexico, and Chili, Wisconsin just kind of make us hungry.
Other bizarre place names include swearword replacement Flippen, Georgia. Also, the small town of Catfish Paradise, Arizona, which sounds lovely compared to the Hell-themed Massachusetts town of Satan's Kingdom. And who could forget the Christmas wonderland that is Santa Claus, Indiana? Not to mention some of the truly bizarre names like Chicken Bristle, Illinois, or Frankenstein, Missouri.
[Click here to enlarge the map]
Estately
Of all the states Estately collected unusual town names for, Texas has one of the strangest. The town of Ding Dong is actually an unincorporated community in Central Texas, just south of Killeen. It was named after two early settlers, Zulius Bell and Bert Bell. They hired an artist to paint a sign for the town. What he came up with was two bells, one for each brother. Under their names, he wrote "ding" and "dong." Over the years, that caught on with folks and became the town's name.
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Some other questionable city names that didn't make the United States' list are Embarrass, Bigfoot, Hoop and Holler, Latex, Raisin, Scissors, Tarzan and Zipperlandville.
Rhode Island must really have their stuff together because they only have three arguably strange town names — Little Compton, Moosup Valley, and Woonsocket. Congratulations to the small state for being the most dull in the country when it comes to town monikers. No, we're not talking about you, Ohio!
It can sometimes take decades for a town name to be legally changed. So, it's likely these will remain the same for many years to come unless Ding Dong becomes a ghost town.
This map leaves us with one important question, though: Who the heck is Handsome Eddy?
This story originally ran on July 27, 2017.
