We were on the road recently and noticed some towns with ugly, ugly names: Varnell, Brainerd and Farragut, for example. You could just hear them rolling off the tongues in nasal, irritating tones: Braaaaynurd, Varr-nayallll, Farragut … meh. So, what other place names are there that are just plain ugly to say and to hear?
Now I don’t want to hear about places like Bug Tussle, Lick Skillet, or Warwoman Dell. These are charming and interesting names, albeit, off the beaten path of names. Murder Creek and Knucklesville Road have a certain offbeat charm as well, despite their somewhat grim origins. I’m talking places that just sound ugly. Any candidates?
For big city names, I think Pittsburgh could have done better. Pittsfield, MA could have picked a better one too. I sometimes wonder what the other contenders were when it came time to make a decision on some location names.
I drove through it one time. It has a very carefully worded sign on one of its buildings that says, “The Women’s Institute of Ugley.” Normally they just say, “The Bradford Women’s Institute” etc!
In St. Louis we had the twin suburbs of Velda Village and Velda Village Hills. The residents of VV thought that was too confusiong so they changed their name – to Velda City.
St. Louis also has a reputation for unfortunate choices for street names. In the south city we have an depressing trio of Sulphur, Hydraulic and Flad. Out in the suburbs, one patriotic developer named the streets after the World War II battles of Bataan and Corregidor.
I understand Belchertown but not Sudbury. It sounds like a nice name to me. It isn’t that far from here and it is quite affluent. The native pronunciation is said with a remotely British way and sounds nice but even the phonetic American way sounds OK to me.
