Boringly ordinary town names

Just off the top of my head. All these are signifant towns, mostly with a few thousand peeople

Opp AL
Smackover AR
Loogootee IN
What Cheer IA
Pippa Passas KY
Bunkie LA
D’Lo MS
Pahrump NV
Kiryas Joel NY
84 PA
Sedro Woolley WA
Combined Locks WI

Also, Nyork Nyork, which doesnt sound funny anymore

A relative from the north of England who visited Ontario and Quebec noted that many names there were very familiar to him–Hull, Durham, Whitby, Pickering, York, Grimsby and several others.

And “Port Sunlight” and “Port Ivory” remind me of another Ontario town: Ajax. However it’s not named for the detergent or the hero from ancient Greece, but for a ship: HMS Ajax (22) - Wikipedia

Townsville. Fictional city from The Powerpuff Girls. Less famously, the name of a city in Northeast Australia.

~Max

Rural, Wisconsin. Accurate and descriptive, if ordinary. :slight_smile:

All of these in upstate New York
Olive
Clay
Calcium
Fine
Pyrites

and Drums, PA

I should add Bournville.

A model village on the southwest side of Birmingham, England, founded by the Quaker Cadbury family for employees at its Cadbury’s chocolate factory, and designed to be a “garden” village where the sale of alcohol was forbidden.

A desirable place to live these days, but still no pubs.

Here in WA we’ve got East Olympia, which is actually south of Olympia rather than east.

A few miles away from that in the rural part of the county we have the more conventionally boringly-named towns of Gate and Bush.

Michigan has Climax, Hell, Colon, White Pigeon, Bad Axe, Parchment, Portage, Podunk, Plymouth, Cadillac.

I’m not going to point them out, but some of these names are neither ordinary nor boring.

The old anglo-saxon word for village is “Ham” - which occurs frequently in English place names, for example: Rotherham, originally a village by the river Rother.

And if your village isn’t near something interesting? There are several places in England just called Ham.

Here’s an example, chosen…entirely…at…random:

j

(BTW - that’s the entire wikipedia entry, right there in that box.)

I used to own a guidebook to the Cambridge (UK) area. Its entire description of Pidley: “Lives up to its name.”

I witnessed a who’s-on-first style confusing conversation due to the mundane nature of a place name in New Hampshire. We arrived in the car at Weirs Beach with friends from out of town, and my dad, who was driving, conversationally said, “Weirs Beach.”

The passenger of course heard, “Where’s beach?,” pointed and said “I think it’s over there…” to which my dad, who was so familiar with Weirs Beach that he didn’t think about the homonym, said, “yeah … Weirs Beach!”

They repeated this conversation about three times before they figured it out.

ETA: I just realized I didn’t actually know what a “weir” is. I thought it was some kind of topographical feature, like a spit of land…but apparently it’s a kind of dam. Live and learn.

How about Plainfield, Il?

There is a dot on the map (or on some maps) in New Hampshire, between Farmington and Rochester that is called simply “Place.” I never heard any of the locals call it that, though.

Alcoa, Tn.
Yes, named for the Aluminum company.

Springfield–found literally in every State of the Union.

The Springfield of Germany and neighboring countries is Neustadt (New Town, couldn’t be more boring):

There’s a Plainville MA. It adjoins my town on the border with RI.

Indiana has West Baden Springs, likewise located at a mineral spring. It combines the directional prefix, and the reference to mineral baths in two different languages.

Speaking of languages, Germany has a major city called Essen. Which is the German word for “eat.”

Both Plainfield and Plainville are also towns in Connecticut.