Comment by rebuilder
5 years ago
Finland has a lot of intentionally rude place names, especially in the north. Places like "cunt pond" ("vittulampi"), "cockpile" ("kullirova"), "cuntwhistle bog" ("vitunviheltämänjänkä") etc.
As to why this is, I've heard a number of theories. One is that people used to be less prudish and this kind of talk was much more commonplace back in the day. Also that the culture up north is more conducive to crude language. It's also possible that when these areas were being surveyed, the locals made some of these names up just to mess with the likely southern officials sent to talk to them.
Also I've heard that this is why there are so many lakes named "Holy lake" ("pyhäjärvi") - at some point, enough was enough and the officials just stopped accepting the local names. True or not, who knows.
Similar with "Grope Cunt Lane" in England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane
There are some good place names too, like "Shitterton", "Cockermouth", and "Bell End". Only Shitterton is intentional, though. It does literally mean "town near the place where you have a poo"
My advisor (Finnish) told me almost every one’s last name is some form of “Järvi”; when the Finns were asked to pick a last name, the guidance was to use a profession or a major physical landmark near them. There are 10s of thousands of lakes (järvi)...
They probably let the builders name it. If you have ever worked on a building site you will have found that every noun is preceeded by the word fucking.
Jewsons, a builders merchant in the UK did a brilliant take on this in one of their adverts.