Xyre » oregon http://www.xyre.org Ancient writings, current events, and my other whims Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:15:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en Silly place names in the Pacific Northwest http://www.xyre.org/2008/03/12/silly-place-names-in-the-pacific-northwest/ http://www.xyre.org/2008/03/12/silly-place-names-in-the-pacific-northwest/#comments Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:48:48 +0000 Sam http://www.xyre.org/2008/03/12/silly-place-names-in-the-pacific-northwest/ I have long thought that the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and some of northern California) possesses the most ridiculous place names of anywhere in North America (and possibly the world). Much of this is a product of local Native languages, as it is all over North America, but some of it is just human silliness. Some of the pronunciations are reasonable (enough), but some are maddeningly unintuitive and therefore—rightly or wrongly—employed as shibboleths to identify ‘true’ PNWers from everybody else (mostly Californians, even those who moved to the area years ago and are now locals).

If I’ve left anything off this list that you feel merits inclusion in such a, uh, worthy list, please leave it in a comment.

Silly-sounding place names

However, the one Cree village in Québec definitely deserves to be on this list too: Whapmagoostui, PQ. Also, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is pretty good.

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