more awesome

[angevin2]

Serious awesome: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed the Senate!

Frivolous awesome: A New York Times article on rude place names in the UK
"It's pronounced 'PENNIS-tun,'" Fiona Moran, manager of the Old Vicarage Hotel in Penistone, said over the telephone, rather sharply. When forced to spell her address for outsiders, she uses misdirection,

Comments

[missdisco]

Isn't that place mentioned in Wuthering Heights, to add to the constant 'Bronte's were horny bitches' approach to analysing their work?

[poisoninjest]

Heh. Only last week I was telling a friend how my high school English teacher traumatized us by telling us about Penis-tone Crag. Which led to a discussion of Broneteian penis metaphors (Penistone Crag vs. Mr. Brocklehurst phallic smackdown!).

[maeveenroute]

All I can say is... my mom lives in Onancock, Virginia.

[glynnis]

I still chuckle over "Shepherds Bush" and "St. John's Wood" whenever I'm in London. And "Cockfosters", of course.

[liseuse]

Oh even we find it funny. Trust me on that one.

[elettaria]

My parents live in Willifield Way and use the same sort of misdirection. It takes a while before you can spell it out with a straight face, too, and you absolutely have to because otherwise people start giggling or making dirty jokes. Get on with it in a brisk, businesslike voice, spelling it out before they have a chance to ask with a snigger, and they behave. There's an Erskine Hill round the corner, which my uncle calls Foreskin Hill.

There's something odd about the existence of a place name too lewd to be printed in a newspaper. I take it they're thinking of the likes of Gropecunt Lane, though apparently those (and it seemed there were many) have been renamed by now. The Wikipedia article also mentions Horselydown Lane in Southwark, London, discussing whether it means "whores lie down" or "horse lea" as in "meadow". Last I checked, there wasn't any space for meadows in Southwark, but I suppose it was less built-up all that time ago. I've a feeling it was always a closely-built area, though, like Edinburgh's Old Town.

[elettaria]

By the way, I remember a pub quiz question once on which of the list of dodgy place names in the UK actually existed. Ogle was one of them, I remember. I always used to giggle when passing Maidenhead and Leatherhead on the London-Guildford train. (It sounds even odder when you say something like, "Rabbi Jonathan Romain, rabbi of Maidenhead".)

[tree_and_leaf]

There's a former Gropecunt Lane in Oxford; it's now Magpie Lane.

The Fleshmarket's the meat market, though (I mean: in the non-euphemistic sense).

[elettaria]

I know, and how they mannaged commerce of any sort in those tiny little wynds is beyond my powers to imagine, but it still sounds dodgy.

Clicking on the link below, apparently Dildo is a very historic place. That's nice, dears.