mhoyeI still remember how surprised I was when I learned that Nantucket was a real place.
What is the most made-up-sounding place name you know? I know they’re all made up but you know what I mean.
lee@mhoye worcester is pronounced woostah and i think that earns it points here
Phredd Groves@mhoye Catbrain
Phil@mhoye Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
Craig@mhoye Timbuktu
TeflonTrout 
he/him@mhoye Poughkeepsie
@TeflonTrout Poughkeepsie is real!?
j-r conlinIndeed. So is:
Piscataway (which is a terrible way to prevent feline intrusions), and is not that close to Slaughter Beach.
Okefenokee (I prefer my fenokees more cherry)
and Zzyzx (which will not get you anywhere in Zork)
@mhoye That's what I said!
fraggle@mhoye City of Industry, CA
Edit: or Street, UK - hq of the Clark's shoe manufacturing company
CYBER_RISK_MITIGATION_REMINDER
Heroku's Basilisk (@[email protected])
Attached: 2 images British place names are procedurally-generated gibberish
Itamar Turner-Trauring@mhoye Newington (though it turns out to go back at least to 12th century in England)
miles per flower@mhoye Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!
stephen@mhoye Nova Scotia loves prefixes to place names like Upper, Middle, Lower, or East, West, etc. This is carried out to extremes in Lower East Pubnico to Upper West Pubnico. Why is there a Center East Pubnico and a Middle East Pubnico? Does East Pubnico include Lower/Middle/Center/Upper East Pubnico?? And Pubnico??? what is that?
@mhoye The Canadian and Amercian north east coast is full of weird names. Fishkill NY, Bangor Maine, Chezetcook NS. Quebec has Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!. And Newfoundland .. Dildo, and Heart's Content.
Si Dawson@mhoye When I was a child I read an (Australian) kids book that mentioned Moonee Ponds.
Which - of course - was fictional.
Until maybe 40 years later I ended up living in the suburb over, in Melbourne.
Blew my mind.
Lee Dohm@mhoye Weed, California
Ben Aveling@mhoye Leopardstown
🇨🇦 Joey Eremondi@mhoye Saskatchewan has Eyebrow, Elbow, Moose Jaw, and Climax
David Mitchell 
Rick Valenzuela
Emma on Instagram: "WHAT IN THE WORLD AUSTRALIA? 😅 Oh man. I love you and I love how you name your roads. . . . . #funnyvideo #twitchstreamer #reaction #twitch #australia"
6,112 likes, 459 comments - emmzyplays on August 12, 2025: "WHAT IN THE WORLD AUSTRALIA? 😅 Oh man. I love you and I love how you name your roads. . . . . #funnyvideo #twitchstreamer #reaction #twitch #australia".
Paul@mhoye There is a well known railway station at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
Slightly further away from North Wales are the villages of Over Wallop, Middle Wallop and Nether Wallop.
Leigh Garland
M. Grégoire@plwt
There's a video of the BBC weatherman the day #Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was the warmest place in the UK: https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM?feature=shared
Liam Dutton nails pronouncing Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
@ NovaNaturalist HAS ALSO MOVEDLlanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was in fact made up as a place name - it was a 19th Century publicity stunt to give the village the longest name in Britain. Its really just a railway station to serve the otherwise sensibly named village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.
Michael Newton@mhoye Nether Wallop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nether_Wallop
@mhoye there was also the village near a beach in Italy called Fonteblanda - which translates roughly as 'bland (tasting) spring'
filipa mv@mhoye right here in Toronto there is Random St and Supertest Rd.
I used to (emphasis on used to) use “supertest” as a “random” string for my tests and the first time i saw it in the real world i almost had a stroke
Peter Bindels
roasty
Derek Martin@mhoye Dildo, Newfoundland
small snoring rock formation
paramnesiac@mhoye Zzyzx, California
@mhoye we used to have a test route from Kissing, Germany to Fucking, Austria. Takes about 2 hours.
Until those Fuckers changed their village name to Fugging.
quadrivial, tall and graying
smith@mhoye The Hell's Kitchen of my bastard grandfather.
Bujold@mhoye For some reason I've never managed to figure out, there's a lot of villages at the northern end of the Gaspe peninsula with very "fantasy RPG location" types of names. Translated loosely, highlights include Bone Cape, Griffin's Cove (the preposition used in French makes it clear that we're talking mythical creature and not surname here) and my favorite, Sword Hilt. Further down the southern side, you also have one that translates (a bit more loosely) as Good Adventure
@mhoye
A real place, but a fabricated name:
There is a police station in Sheffield (UK) on Letsby Avenue.
A real place, but a fabricated name:
There is a police station in Sheffield (UK) on Letsby Avenue.
neoluddite@mhoye in Australia it's a toss up between Batman and Boggabilla
Ariaflame@neoluddite @mhoye Western Australia has "Innaloo"
Aaron Priven@mhoye well California was the name of a place in a novel before it was used for a real place…
Ben Rosengart@mhoye I am fond of Cheesequake
@mhoye big bone lick, Kentucky
Daveography 🇨🇦
Mousehole, Cornwall
Alex Ball@mhoye Nanaimo has Twiggly Wiggly Rd, Jingle Pot Rd, and Bergen-Op-Zoom Pl.
I know the origin of Jingle Pot, but they all still sound 110% made up.
Peter Drake
Jenn, blobby goblin
Chris Mackay 🇨🇦@mhoye Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
europlus 
@mhoye then, of course, there’s Gropecunt Lane.
Artemysia@mhoye Burrumbuttock. Australia has some doozies.
AspiringLudditeLittle Snoring
and
Giggleswick
aspeed, a/k/a Dumpster Peacock@mhoye Humptulips. Also, Twisp. And I had a British friend who would always stump for Leighton Buzzard, which I will admit, does sound kind of Welcome To Night Vale - ish.
GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)@mhoye Fucking, village in Austria.
Amerika, village (now part of a town) in Saxony, Germany.
Michael@mhoye A local favorite in these parts: Boring, Oregon.
Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦@mhoye Truth-or-Consequences, NM.
Cameron MacLeod@mhoye Proton Station, Ontario.