It’s not just a town in Scotland; Atholl is a large historic district in the Highlands, roughly coterminous with the modern Perthshire. In Scotland, it’s pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable: ah-TH’LL. This a recording of a Brit pronouncing the Duke of Atholl’s family castle, Blair Atholl.
My own contribution to the thread: Cumming, Georgia. Had some friends looking for a home near there, and they ran into the Scunthorpe problem - the family filter on their Internet browser blocked any website with the town’s name.
This exact thing happened to me at work about 20 years ago. A software contractor was working on a project for us, but his emails to me kept getting flagged by our spam filter. I finally figured out that if he removed his contact information, the email would come through. He was located in Cumming, Georgia.
I can’t see the humour myself either. The word ‘athol’ is apparently supposed to sound like ‘asshole’; but in the UK Atholl is pronounced ‘athul’, whereas the word ‘asshole’ is pronounced ‘arseole’, and there is very little overlap.
It’s only about an hour’s drive from my house to the hamlet of Humptulips, which comes from a Native name that has nothing to do with tulips or humping.