"Odd" Wikipedia Articles: Place Names Considered Unusual

I decided that I was going to read the article on "Place Names Considered  Unusual." I chose this because it was the article that stuck out the most to me. I have heard about places being named "weird" things, and some people (mostly non natives of the city or town) tend to think that the name of a town or city is intended to be humorous or offensive. I was curious to know the reasoning behind the choice of words used to name a place.

The first place I came across was "Fucking, Austria," and immediately I was taken back by it. I believe that because I am from America and that choice of wording is used in a profane way, I automatically assume that this place was trying to be funny. However, as I continue to read the article I came to realize that the word is just another word in a sense. It nothing to really worry about, it's a "benign" word in German.

One example that I found to be really funny was "Truth or Consequences, New Mexico." In 1950 they decided to change their name from "Hot Springs" and name it after the host of the television show Truth or Consequences which promised free publicity to any town willing to change its name to that of the show. I understand that you want publicity but was it really worth changing the name to something so asinine.

I really didn't learn anything new from reading this article other than finding out where these places were located and what there names were. I knew that there were places in the world with names some people would consider to be funny, offensive, or just completely absurd. I knew that 9 times out of 10 the people of the town or their local government that gave the name to the town didn't mean anything by it.

I don't really think that any of the information that I read could be useful in any way, it's something interesting to know but I don't think it would benefit you, maybe in a Jeopardy game, but not in real life.

The reason I think it earned a Wikipedia page is because it's interesting and different. There are probably a lot of people in the world who would like to know different things like the names of towns people would think of as unusual. I do believe however, that this information could  easily be found somewhere else, because of the absurdity of some of the towns names. It catches people attention.