It’s a fairly common fantasy trope for place names to be a bit more… colourful than we tend to see in real life, mostly because no-one wants to live in “The Blasted Lands”, I suspect.
My question is, though, are there any examples of real-life place names - in any language - that essentially mean something negative? The Dread Lands, Evil-Man Swamp, that sort of thing.
Desolation Valley springs to mind. Also Mount Diablo, both in California.
Lots of them in Utah: Hell’s Half Acre, Devil’s Garden, Hell’s Backbone, Poison Springs, Desolation Canyon and my personal favorite, Box Death Hollow.
Death Valley.
I grew up on “Jolly Acres” It always seemed normal to me, but got weird reactions from others…
Hell’s Kitchen, neighborhood in Manhattan
Hell’s Gate, (Wikipedia disambiguation page), loooong list of geographic places or features so named. (Variously written Hell’s or Hells)
ETA: Kinda ninaed by kunilou, above. I was actually looking for Devil’s Kitchen, CA., but mis-remembered it as Hell’s Kitchen, thus finding all this.
Any name ending with “Gulch” 
Panama has the Bahia de los Muertos (Bay of the Dead).
One of the main streets in Panama City is nicknamed “Tumba Muerto” (Tomb of the Dead).
There’s also Cerro Bruja (“Witch Mountain”) and Sierra Llorona, named after the “Weeping Woman,” a ghost who searches for her dead children.
The park’s name comes from the Māori words ure meaning penis and wera meaning burnt, thus, the literal translation from Māori is “burnt penis” :eek:
There a various other “Badlands” elsewhere in the American West.
The Skeleton Coast in Namibia.
Cape Fear, North Carolina.
Matanzas(“Massacre”), Cuba
There seem to be plenty of places in the US with a dangerous section of road known as “Dead Man’s Curve”.
Wikipedia lists nine different places called Devil’s Backbone, and six Devil/Devil’s/Devils Islands.
There’s the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina.
What about Calaveras (“Skulls”) County, California? This is where the famed Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was supposed to be from.
You could also get lost in Lost City, West Virginia.
Puerto Rico has some evocative place names, including Caja de Muertos (“Box of Dead People”, the equivalent English language metaphor apparently being “Dead Man’s Chest”. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum), and Isla Culebra (“Snake Island”).