tourist destinations

I'm reading a back issue of a U.K. daily paper, the Globe and Mail from this past August 13, which has a wonderful article on sexual and/or scatological English place names.

The people living in these places sometimes have a trying time dealing with the the ways tourists react to the names of their villages and streets. For example, residents of the English village of Shitterton had the sign welcoming visitors to their tiny town stolen so many times that they finally had the name engraved on a piece of granite so large and heavy that it would be hard to steal.

Shitterton's name derives from a creek that used to be used as a latrine and bisects the town.

Likewise the people living on Butt Hole Road in South Yorkshire got so tired of tourists taking pictures, and sometimes having themselves photographed while mooning in view of the street sign, that they successfully petitioned to have the name changed to Archers Way.

Other interesting English place names include Sluts Hole Lane in South Yorkshire, the village of Penistone, also in South Yorkshire, the town of Crapstone in Devon, the very old village of Bitchfield in Lincolnshire, the town of Nasty in Hertfordshire, and a hamlet called Golden Balls in Oxfordshire, whose name derived from its association with a pub that doubled as a pawnshop.

There's also a Busty View, Chester Le Street in County Durham, and my own personal favorite, Titty Ho, Raunds, in Northamptonshire.

I've never lived in a place with a name as interesting as any of those, and don't know if I'd want to.