Ever heard of a town called Hell or wondered Why you’d visit a place called No Name? How about a quick trip to Accident or a scenic drive through Boring? Believe it or not, these are real towns with names that inspire a chuckle…
Located in the U.S. state of Michigan, Hell was first settled in 1838. The origins of its name are uncertain, but one popular theory suggests that it was named by the German settlers who described the area’s marshy conditions as “so schön hell,” meaning “so beautifully bright.”
Chicken is a small outpost in Alaska that was settled during the gold rush. When it came time to incorporate the town, locals wanted to name it after the plentiful ptarmigan (a type of grouse) in the area.
Batman is a city in the southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey. The name is thought to come from the nearby Batman River, which itself may have been named after the unit of measurement used in the Ottoman Empire, known as “batman.”
No Name is a small town in Colorado, USA. There’s more than one version of how the town got its name, but the most popular is that the state sent out a questionnaire, and the town’s people wrote “No Name” under the section for Name of Town. The state took them seriously and that’s been the name ever since.
The community of Why, Arizona, gets its name from the shape of the two major highways, State Routes 85 and 86, that used to intersect in a Y shape. As Arizona law required all city names to have at least three letters, “Y” was changed to “Why”.