“Buttzville, you say?” – by Nora B. Peevy

Wondering what weird town names there are in the good ole USA? Well, I’ve pulled an all-nighter, and I am wondering. You try sleeping with a twenty-four-pound Pitbull mix who loves to snuggle and a jealous Bombay cat waiting to strike her on the nose the first chance she gets. The dog is a hefty furnace and if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was going through perimenopause again. Let’s go down the rabbit hole together of weird town names, shall we Alice/Al?

1) Toad Suck, Arkansas has a protected river called an “eddy.” When it is low enough, you can see a LOT of toads.

2) WhyNot, North Carolina appears to have been the product of a long and grueling meeting during which nobody could agree on a town name and so it became WhyNot, North Carolina.

3) Accident, Maryland was the result of two men mistakenly surveying the same lot of land, only realizing their mistake when they crossed each other’s paths again. Talk about an accidental name!

4) Between, Georgia is named because it is exactly between Monroe and Loganville according to the postmaster. Very creative!

5) Boring, Oregon was actually named after a Civil War veteran with the last name “Boring” who donated land for the schoolhouse and lent his name for the hotel.

6) Kermit, Texas. This city was named after Theodore Roosevelt’s son, Kermit Roosevelt, who hunted in the area. Even the water tower has a painted image of Kermit the Frog.

7) Frankstein, Missouri is of no relation to Mary Shelley whatsoever, sadly. Gottfried Franken donated land to the town in 1890. It was a town called “Franken Hill” and “Stein” means “Rock” – thus Frankenstein, Missouri.

8) Likely, California was formed because the residents couldn’t agree and said it was “not likely there would ever be a name for the town .” Well, the name stuck.

9) Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky is called this because it looked like a monkey’s eyebrow partially shaped by the Ohio River.

10) Sandwich, New Hampshire is named after the Fourth Earl of Sandwich who couldn’t be bothered to stop gambling to eat and would order a slab of beef between two slices of bread. Soon everyone was ordering sandwiches, and the town was named after the popular food.

If you’re trying to avoid real work or cleaning you can check for more odd town names here: The 50 funniest town names in America, state by state (usatoday.com)

The 27 Weirdest Town Names in America – Bob Vila

Funny Town Names You Won’t Believe Are Real from Every State (rd.com)

35 Small American Towns with The Weirdest Names (ranker.com)

Until next time…

AUTHOR BIO:

Nora B. Peevy is a cat trapped in a human’s body. Please send help or tuna. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Degree with a Concentration in Creative Writing from Cardinal Stritch University and is an Olympic champion sleeper, toiling away for JournalStone/Trepidatio Publishing as a submissions reader and a reviewer for Hellnotes. She is also reading screenplays for the Lovecraft Film Festival again this year. Her first novelette, For the Sake of Brigid was released in May of 2024 and her first novel, Flesh Eating Turtles! will be coming out later this year. Her quirky stories are published in Eighth Tower Press, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Obsidian Butterfly, and other presses. You can find her on Facebook (as Onyx Brightwing), her blog, She Writes Fast | A blog for writers and readers (wordpress.com), and on Slasher as @Sekhautet. She naps in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.