Die Lustige Witwe was translated as The Merry Widow rather than the Lusty Widow, which would probably have been unacceptable.
Yeah, there are a buttload of those in Columbia. My wife grew up there, and her parents still live there. That’s one of the first things I noticed about the place.
If it was actually 9.5 miles, the road probably wouldn’t even be there at all, and if there were some reason for it to be there anyway, it’d probably be named after that reason. In the US, once you get past the East Coast, much of the country was planned before it was settled, and part of the planning was a grid of roads, often including a major road at every integer number of miles. Since the mile number is the reason why the road is there, sometimes that’s what they get named.
I, for one, grinned at this.
It’s not the official name but there is a Fort Blunder
Swasey’s Leap comes to mind. A narrow but deep canyon where legend has it a cowboy jumped his horse across. Not sure how intangible a leap is.
In New Jersey there is a Jenny Jump Mountain and Jenny Jump Stare Park which is named for a different legend.
I believe that Dildo is just down the way from Come-By-Chance, in Conception Bay?
Here in Washington we’ve got Cape Disappointment and Deception Pass.
Just like in Pennsylvania, where you can get from Blue Ball to Paradise through either Intercourse or Bird In Hand.
Norman’s Woe (as mentioned in Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesprus) is an actual rock off Gloucester, MA.
And in New Zealand’s South Island, there’s Doubtful Sound, which I describe as “ehhhh??”
Maybe there’s some geographical place that would be suitable for “Portnoy’s Complaint,” but I’m not sure what. . . .
Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be a Port Noy.
I recently saw an NZ crime drama set in The Remarkables.
And I’m reminded also that Scotland has The Rest and Be Thankful.
And the well-known nickname “Seward’s Folly” for Alaskan territory, though I don’t think it’s an official place name of anywhere.
NH has the following townships, all have an apostrophe:
- Bean’s Grant
- Bean’s Purchase
- Crawford’s Purchase
- Cutt’s Grant
- Dix’s Grant
- Erving’s Location
- Green’s Grant
- Hadley’s Purchase
- Hale’s Location
- Hart’s Location
- Low and Burbank’s Grant
- Martin’s Location
- Pinkham’s Grant
- Sargent’s Purchase
- Thompson and Meserve’s Purchase
Vermont has the following gores, some have an apostrophe and some don’t:
- Buels Gore
- Warren’s Gore
- Averys Gore
- Warner’s Grant
There was a colonial era turnpike running from Rhode Island into Connecticut, that was chartered as being a right of way ten rods wide - and thus later became known as Ten Rod Road. A surveyor’s rod is 16.5 feet, and when RI modernized the road names in the 1930s, Ten Rod Road was designated as Route 165.
There’s an 18 1/2 Mile Rd in Michigan.
There may be other “half mile” roads in that area which has a series of N Mile Rd’s; 18 1/2 Mile was the first I ran across.
There’s a number of towns with fractional number streets, but the Grand Junction CO area not only has fractional streets (e.g. 31 1/2 Rd) but also fractional letters (e.g. D 1/2 Rd).
There are numerous places in Russia named something following the pattern “kilometre [some number]”, which usually indicates its location on a railway line measured from the nearest major city. I’ve passed through “Platform 43 kilometres” on the Moscow-Petersburg route once.