all over
most any time
You wanted to know this, or at least, you have wondered about this. Right? Who names these things?
It may be more complicated than you think. The Domestic Names Committee of the U S Board on Geographic Names is responsible for standardizing the names of places, features and areas within the United States and its dependent areas.
Here’s the part you don’t need to memorize. The folks who serve on the Domestic Names Committee are from the Departments of the Interior, Commerce, Agriculture, Defense and Homeland Security, as well as the United States Postal Service, Government Publishing Office and the Library of Congress. The U S Geological Survey figures in here somewhere. The Committee meets monthly to decide on name issues. Here are a few (and then we wander into other name territory.)
1
The Oregon city of Boring, named after founder William H Boring, has claimed the village of Dull, in Perthshire, Scotland, as its sister city. In 2013, Oregon’s governor designated August 9 to be the official Boring and Dull Day throughout the state. No one had a comment.
2
Bad names, or great names, you be the judge.
– We’ll begin with this unfortunately named city in Illinois: Effingham.
Continuing in Illinois…
– Normal
In the mid-19th century, the townspeople of North Bloomington looked at the Illinois State Normal University and decided that this would be a good name for their town. A normal school trains teachers to teach. Which reminds me of this scholastic wisdom: Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.
The only comments I can think of concerning Normal would be self-referential. Hence, we’ll move on.
– Muddy
The modern village of Muddy had its start as a mining settlement established in 1903 by the Harrisburg Big Muddy Coal Company.
– Sandwich
This is a boring story considering where it could have gone. Congressman Long John Wentworth named Sandwich after his home town of Sandwich, New Hampshire.
– Golf
The village of Golf is named after the Glen View Golf Club’s nearby train station. Does this help?
– Boody
named after a guy
– Time
In the 2000 census, the population of the village of Time was 29. That’s all I could find. Google doesn’t know Time.
– Oblong
The only population center in the United States with this name. It comes from its geographically oblong shape, or as one commentator described it, “It’s oblongular.”
One more in Illinois…
– Goofy Ridge
In the old days, this area was known as The Ridge. The story goes that the river bank was a popular location for moonshiners and carousers to drink and do stupid stuff. One highly inebriated night, the local game warden boasted that he could shoot a walnut off anyone’s head. He insisted he was not so drunk that he couldn’t demonstrate this impressive feat.
Of course, one of the carousers, intoxicated, volunteered. They placed a nut on the volunteer’s head, the warden aimed his .22 rifle and shot the nut clean off. One incredulous witness proclaimed, “Now that’s one damned goofy thing to do.” From then on, the camp, and surrounding town, was ever after known as Goofy Ridge.
3
best names of cats I have known
– Pully Plush Button
– Tripod – had only three legs
– Mephistopheles – Bokonon’s father
– Al the Answer Cat
– Baron Alonzo Halfstash von Knucklehead of the Wilde
– ! Tunia – pronounced with the first initial expressed as an explosive
– Fog – lived in San Francisco with my brother Laurence
– Chief Tucker White Toes – moved to Alaska
best dog names
– Potato
– Ketchup
Potato and Ketchup are cousins.
– Dingleberry – the family dog when I was growing up
– Geezenstack
– Rodnok
– Dr Barney Rubble, MD, or Barney McRubble, DDS
I’m not going to tell you who added the “DDS” to his name, but further investigation yields that, in fact, Dr Rubble, or Dr McRubble, was not a dentist, but rather a gynecologist. Because I couldn’t let this go, I discovered that ole Barney was also, at one time or another, a crane operator, a furniture repossessor and a police officer in the town of Bedrock.