In 2004 the residents of the small town of Fucking in Austria had a vote on whether they should change the name of their settlement. Many residents had become tired of the frequent theft of the town's street signs and the endless visits of puerile English speaking tourists. Fortunately, for those of us who are are amused by infantile humor, the residents voted to keep the Fucking name.
Of course Fucking isn't the only town with a place-name which sounds rude to English speakers. Around the world there are many locations which have names which sound rude to English speaking ears. I could list hundreds of examples, like the town of Vagina in Russia, the towns of Clit in Romania and Condom in France. But why list all the rudely named places around the globe when I can show you them all on an interactive map.
The Really Rude Map is an interactive map of rudely named places around the world. I created the map using Mapbox GL. In truth however most of the effort behind this map was done by Gary Gale for his Vaguely Rude Places. Gary's own interactive map of the data is currently offline (which is partly why I created my map). If like me you want to create your own map from the data then it is available under an Open Data Commons Attribution license.
Post more of these amazing posts.
ReplyDeleteWonderful way to get in touch with my snickering inner twelve-year old. I actually went out of my way in Newfoundland to get a picture of me in front of the Dildo post office (though I'm not particularly proud of this). You (or Gary, the originator) missed another Newfoundland Place that I visited (for its natural beauty, not for its snicker-inducing name) Nanny's Hole.
ReplyDeleteand this article lists Man Point, Muddy Hole and others.
https://www.familyfuncanada.com/newfoundland-place-names-will-make-blush/
Nice map and thanks for the name check as well!
ReplyDeleteThanks to the generosity of OpenCage, the original Vaguely Rude Places map is now back online, as of this evening, at a new home at https://www.vaguelyrudeplacesmap.com, though all the old URL links should still resolve, if I've got my web server config right.
Now I just need to work my way through the contributions that have stacked up over the past few months ... an updated set of GeoJSON files will be on the site just as soon as I've got all the contributions marshalled.