I saw this on an “Internet list,” so I am very skeptical of this–but I don’t know much French slang.
There are some mountains in the US called the “Grand Tetons” which (according to the factoid in this list) is French for “large breasts,” presumably owing to the shapes of the mountains.
Sounds fishy to me, but I thought I’d throw it out for review.
Any ideas???
Yeah, I believe this is a true story. The explorer who “discovered” them was, as the story goes, reminded of his girlfriend/wife when he came upon them, so he gave them that name.
I always understood that the French “Grand Tetons” was a shade vulgar, as in “Big Tits.”
Okay, we’ll rename them, then:
The Grand Partons!
(okay, Kevin Nealon’s joke…)
You heard right. The words ‘téton’, ‘sein’ and ‘mamelon’, all refering to the female chest are used in French to describe geographic features. ‘Mamelon’, meaning nipple, is fairly common in denoting a hillock. French is not the only language that uses breasts for geography. If I remember correctly, some Amerindian languages do, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many other languages did too.
Only humans commit inhuman acts.
‘Téton’ might be a bit slangy, but I wouldn’t say it’s vulgar.
As far as téton being slangy vs. vulgar, it’s use is considered colloquial/informal in French. And today you would say “gros tétons”, not “grands tétons”, in the plural form.
omniscientnot, in a previous incarnation.
The hyphen says it all…
About 20 years ago, a psychiatrist I knew–a woman–told me she had seen a very busty teenage girl, wearing a print sweatshirt; across the bosom it read “MAMMOTH”!
It’s true that “tétons” means “tits” in french (refer to the famous song “Valentine” by Maurice Chevalier), but I’m not so sure about Momotaro’s statement that
I don’t recall ever seeing a French or Swiss geographical name with any of those words in it. Do you have any examples?
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
She’s got huge…tracts of land.
Oops, thought this was the Monty Python Holy Grail thread for a second. 
Good thing it wasn’t rednecks that discovered those mountians or we would know them as “Big Ol’ Hooters.”
From Le Petit Larousse Illustré 1996:
MAMELON n.m. 1.Éminence charnue qui s’élève vers le centre de la mamelle, du sein. 2.Sommet, coline de forme arrondie. Les mamelons boisés des Vosges.
I think I saw a place name that began like this: Les mamelons de…something I can’t remember. I’ll try to find it.
‘Mamelon’ is the only of the three words mentioned earlier that has an official geographical denotation in my dictionaries; however, I have heard the other words being used colloquially.
Only humans commit inhuman acts.