We’ve Got Some Strange Town Names in Illinois

No, not the place in the photo above. That town is in Wales. However, what we lack in length (fill in your own joke), we in Illinois make up for in oddity.

Caitlin Wilson at Reboot Illinois has an interesting piece that takes a look at some of the names Illinois has slapped under various "Welcome to..." signs.

The Head Scratchers:

Goofy Ridge, Dunfermline, Mooseheart, Media, Hometown, Golf, Orangeville, Sandwich, Joppa, Hooppole

 

 

The Borrowed From Someplace Else:

Warsaw, Waterloo, Versailles, Verona, Vienna, Venice, Troy, Toledo, Rome, Paris, New Berlin, Liverpool, Kent, Hamburg, Geneva, Dover, Crete, Brussels, Bristol, Bath, Athens, Andalusia, Alhambra, Thebes, Pekin, Lima, Havana, Cypress, Cairo, Palestine, Panama, Peru, New Holland, Malta, Macedonia, Cuba, Columbia, Antioch, Tennessee, Wyoming, Ohio, Kansas, Dakota, Albany, Annapolis, El Paso, Georgetown, London Mills, Manhattan, Milan, New Memphis, Newark, Omaha, Oregon, Raleigh, Salem, Sparta, Topeka, Virginia

And a few of Caitlin's observations:

• La Place has got to be the least creative place name of all time.

• La Prairie is a pretty close second, especially for a town that is actually located in the Prairie State.

• Why Sugar Grove and not High Fructose Corn Syrup Grove? And why Spring Grove and not Winter Grove?

• I’m going to bet the body of water from which Round Lake takes its name is not actually spherical.

• Oblong is actually oblong shaped. That’s not a joke. Just a cool fact.

• Maybe Flossmoor was a thinly-veiled instruction to its early townspeople.

• Bone Gap sounds like it could be a painful calcium deficiency disorder.

• Grayslake doesn’t sound like the most appealing of body of water. We have Crystal Lake, too, though, which does sound nice.

• Cave in Rock sounds like it was named by man in cave.

• I’m going to guess there are very few actual castles in Castleville.

• Cerro Gordo means fat hill. Who thought that was a flattering name for a town?

• Chicago is a Native American word meaning onion or garlic. How…smelly. Good thing we have Aroma Park to help counteract it.

And, of course, Illinois is not alone in having strangely-named municipalities: