I know we’ve done weird and wonderful town names to death here, but I’ve come across a few in my (original) home state that are just downright boringly ordinary. I’m not talking about the Newtowns Brightons and such ilk, I’m talking:
Research
Sale
Speed
and similar. Like the US-named Intercourse in Pennsylvania, just weird as shit, but ordinary names.
Got any more for me?
Industry, CA. It usually goes by the marginally more poetic “City of Industry,” but the name is really just Industry.
Milltown
Coronation and Legal, AB.
If villages are okay too (all in Alberta):
Hamlets:
Unincorporated communities:
The full lists for Alberta are here; in addition to non-boring names, I skipped ones that just seemed to describe the local landscape, as well as ones named after gemstones and other impressive- or encouraging-sounding words, because those, when used as place names, seem more like boasting/puffery than boring, ordinary words to me.
(I hope this doesn’t get spam-filtered for having so many links when I’m new. They’re all to Wikipedia.)
The ultimate reflection of the thread title
I see your Boring and I raise Nothing.
Any tourist in the UK will soon notice the stranger town and village names. Nether Wallop, Wyre Piddle, Giggleswick. They will also be confused by places whose names are pronounced in a totally non-phonetic way, like Leominster (Lemster), Beaulieu (Bewly), Towcester (Toaster).
Few places here were planned with names. There are some in more modern times like Milton Keynes but most seem to have just happened. Before maps, many villages didn’t see any need to have a name so when some cartographer came around and asked “What’s this place called,” what was written down may not have born any strong relationship to how the locals referred to ‘home’.
Since many places that did have names were ‘christened’ by one of the colonising European tribes and subsequently mispronounced by locals, we don’t really get many ‘boring’ names.
The province of Quebec had “Asbestos”, which recently changed its name (via a referendum) to “Val-des-Sources”. There is still the nearby “Thetford Mines” (there’s been no mining there for years). Further north, there is a railway flag stop called “Microwave Tower”.
Normal Illinois.
Middletown, Ohio.
Motto: “Together, We Rise.”
In case anyone didn’t follow the link above, Boring is twinned with Dull in Scotland and Bland in Australia.
Frostproof, Florida.
My village used to be called Road.
Because of the confusion (and because there’s another village nearby called Roade), they changed it in 1922.
To Rode.
It’s 29 miles from Street.
I used to know someone who lived in Research.
I’ve always thought Doreen is a weirdly dull name. And also Ovens.
Accident, MD. I’ve been there. On purpose!
This was to have been my addition to the thread. It got its name from the fact that it hosted a “normal school” (a higher-education institution dedicated to training teachers.)
Huh. Thanks kenobi. Used to live in the area, never knew that.