From shit to dildo - bizarre place names all over the world

Fak-Fak - that sounds suspiciously like a double "fuck!" but it's actually the name of a town in West Papua on the Indonesian part of the island of New Guinea. Not only the city is called that, the district is also called Fak-Fak. And what might the mountain range on the Fak Fak Peninsula be called? Correct: Fak Fak Mountains.

Nutmegs are grown around Fak-Fak, there are pretty colonial buildings from the Dutch era in the port city, which lies on the picturesque peninsula with hills, caves and several rivers. The tropical waters of the Seram Sea are teeming with many endemic rainbowfish.

According to the tourism authority, “new species of fish and coral are constantly being discovered” in the nutrient-rich waters. A gem is Toran Bay with its green overgrown chalk cliffs in the middle of a turquoise water landscape:

Fak-Fak also has an airport. Of course, as it should be, it has a three-letter code assigned by the aviation organization IATA. They were merciful there and gave Fak-Fak the abbreviation FKQ, and the obvious FAK was left out. Instead, the False Bay seaplane base in Alaska has to deal with this code.

The place in Iran is embedded in a lush green hilly landscape that sometimes sinks into a mystical fog, and it's not far to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, where flamingos live: Really "shitty", like its name in western ears sounds like it is not in Shit in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran.

The town has around 1,000 inhabitants, and a Facebook page has borne his name since 2010, but it has neither entries nor followers. However, Shit has gained a certain notoriety through its entry in Gary Gale's online map, which the British geographer maintains under the name "Vaguely Rude Places of the World".

Appropriately polarized onomists recognize something dingy in the place name Blowhard - the backwater in the Australian state of Victoria owes its name possibly only to the strong winds that "blow particularly strongly" here in the central Highlands.

In the 19th century, Blowhard played a role in the Australian gold rush as a mining town. Today it has less than 100 inhabitants. The point of reference is the city of Ballarat, where the great digging started with the discovery of gold in 1851. With success: The Welcome Nugget was found here in 1858, weighing 69 kilos one of the largest gold nugget finds in history. One of Victoria's top tourist attractions today is Sovereign Hill, an open-air museum in Ballarat's Golden Point where visitors can prospect for the precious metal.

A coin find proves that the area in what is now the district of Voitsberg in Styria was already inhabited in Roman times – however, the municipality of Edelschrott does not owe its name to this historical event. "Edel" is derived from the Slavic jelenŭ (deer) and "scrap" from the Middle High German schrôt, a word meaning clearing. The community is interesting for tourists because of its parish church, a circular hiking trail in the network of so-called backpack villages and two idyllic reservoirs.

Compared to other places in Styria, the Edelschrotter actually get off relatively well with the name of their community. Just think of Übelbach or Kotzgraben.

Being asked about the name of their village again and again – the 600 or so residents of Kotzen in Brandenburg probably find that sickening. But they put up with it bravely and even founded "Proaktiv Kotzen": That's what a voter group in the municipal council calls itself.

The place and area trigger anything but nausea. There are ancient trees in the tidy village, there is the handsome village church of Kotzen and not far from Lake Ferchesar with a bathing area, campsite and canoe rental. According to the community website, the place name is derived from the Slavic expressions cossym (tuft of hair) and cossa (goat).

The residents of Fucking in Austria were so annoyed by the constant theft of their place-name signs that the town was renamed Fugging in 2021. But in Dildo in the Canadian province of Newfoundland, they remain steadfast. Efforts to change the name in the 1980s were rejected by the residents - they prefer to rely on the marketing opportunities.

Tourists not only come here for selfies in front of the town sign, but also take the opportunity to board excursion boats for whale watching and iceberg spotting in dildos. Or enjoy a craft beer from the Dildo Brewing Company on Trinity Bay. The town's name is said to derive from the wooden pegs that the area's cod fishermen used to use to hold the oars of their boats in place.

But commercialization also has its limits: Community officials were not enthusiastic when a local sex shop photographed its sex toy with the dildo street sign as the background and posted the pictures on social media.

Eventually the residents had enough and welded it to protect it from theft. Because the town sign of the municipality of Bitsch in the Swiss canton of Valais was also a coveted item, at least among English-speaking tourists who felt reminded of Bitch. In fact, the name goes back to a medieval water pipe called Bitscheri. The spot itself offers "peace and relaxation for those in the know", at least that's what the community website promises.

One of the most exciting leisure activities in the hiking area around the town is a walk across the Massegga Biel-Aspen suspension bridge at the Massa Gorge. The Gibidum reservoir is very close by and is fed by the Aletsch Glacier – the largest of its kind in the Alps – which is around 20 kilometers north of Bitsch as the crow flies.

The coat of arms of the city of Batman in south-eastern Turkey shows neither a bat nor a comic hero – but a winding tower, an oil pump and the year 1955, because only then did Batman become an independent city.

She's something of a Dallas of Turkey. In the 1940s, large oil deposits were discovered during drilling. From the 1950s, Batman, once a village and now populated by around 450,000 people, experienced faster population growth than the well-known oil metropolis in the USA after the settlement of oil companies. Batman is named after the Batman Çayı, a tributary of the Tigris that flows through Batman Province.

The municipality of Condom in the Gers department in southern France lives largely from tourism. However, it has more to offer than its ambiguous name: Built around a Benedictine abbey that was built in the eleventh century, the town of 6,500 inhabitants is located on the Via Podiensis, a French part of the Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela.

And it is in the middle of the historic region of Armagnac, growing area of ​​the well-known brandy of the same name. A visit to the Musée de l'Armagnac reveals how it is produced. A Musée du Préservatif on the subject of condoms also opened in 2006 - but this has since closed again.

This article was first published in April 2022.