I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Difference between revisions

** Also Cirith Ungol and assorted places. Frodo and Sam may be excused, because many location names are only told to the reader and not the protagonists. But it still adds some amusement to the chapter when you translate the elvish location names - and realize that they are trying to reach the ''Pass Of The Huge Evil Monster Spider'', climb the ''Stairs To The Pass Of The Huge Evil Monster Spider'' and finally enter the ''Cave Of The Huge Evil Monster Spider'' - and then slowly begin to wonder if that pass is ''really'' as unguarded as they thought...

** As ''The New Yorker'' noted in its review of [[The Movie]] of ''The Two Towers'', such a name definitely makes things easier when asking for directions.

* ''Shadowmarch'' from the eponymous novel by [[Tad Williams]].

** Nanny Ogg has a set of rules about places like Dontgonearthe Castle, which are basically a series of instructions that go "having ignored the previous instruction, don't perform the next step in your inevitable demise," up until you've met your inevitable demise, when it's "having been bitten by the vampire, don't come crying to me."

* In [[Robert Louis Stevenson]]'s ''[[Treasure Island]]'', the eponymous island's name is Skeleton Island.

** Not exactly Canon, but in ''[[The Pyrates]]'', George Macdonald Frazer suggests that the Dead Man's Chest on which fifteen men were once marooned was in fact a sand bar that resembled the torso of a floating corpse poking out of the water.

* Pretty much any location in ''[[Bored of the Rings]]'', starting with "The Sty" and going downhill from there.

 

* A parody: ''[[Garth Marenghi's Darkplace]]''.

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': Though Sunnydale doesn't count, the name it originally had does: Boca del Infierno or the Mouth of Hell. The ''Tales of the Slayers'' comic "The Glittering World" shows that Mayor Wilkins renamed it purposefully (also considering "Sunny Valley" and "Happydale").

== Newspaper Comics ==

* In ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'', there are several of these. You know Calvin is awesome when you see that he has the nerve to sled down a hill named Grim Reaper Gorge or Mount Maim. At least, until you realize [[Invoked Trope|he's probably the one who named them]].

 

== Recorded and Stand up Comedy ==

* ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'', trying to track down Psycrow, reads the Idiot's Guide To Hideously Dangerous Places; featuring entries on The Pit Of Unimaginable Fear, The Cavern Of Flesh Ripping Weasels, and [[Take That|Det]][[Detroit|roit]]. He turns out to be at The Boulevard of Acute Discomfort.

* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' has Ghastly Gorge - home to jagged rocks, huge thorned plants and giant eel-things that try to eat anything that passes by. Also Tartarus apparently exists in Equestria. Any place that shares a name with the ancient Greek underworld can't be very nice.

 

== Real Life ==

* Cherepovets, a Russian city. Its name means ''"(city) of the skulls"''. The historical reason for such a name choice is that the city was actually built on an old pagan shrine.

** Incidentally, it's the birthplace of Vassiliy Vereshchagin, a famous Russian painter, who painted the previous picture in this article (called ''"The Apotheosis of War"'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20170313111037/http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/s/stepanow_a_f/142/apofeoz.jpg]).

* Pile-of-Bones, Saskatchewan. Renamed (to Regina) and made the capital of the province. Also: [[wikipedia:Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump|Head-Smashed-In Buffalo-Jump]]. Which is an interesting case of a creepy name that's also [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].

* More "I'm Rather Suspicious About The Name Of That Place", but in Newfoundland there's Dildo, Placentia, Come-By-Chance, and so many more that there's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpycgIlhJXs a song about it]. ''"Historians are still debating whether Newfoundland was discovered by Leif Ericson or Sigmund Freud."''—Dave Broadfoot

* The waters off Guadalcanal are immortalized as Ironbottom Sound because of all the Allied and Japanese ships that lay at the bottom. In the US Navy [[Due to the Dead|silence is observed when a ship cruises over.]]

 

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[[Category:You Would Not Want to Live In Dex]]

[[Category:Naming Conventions]]

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