From Red Hot to Monkey's Eyebrow: Unusual Kentucky Place Names

Introduction

Introduction Kentucky certainly has its share of curious and unusual place names, some of which are unique. I don't think any other state has a Monkey's Eyebrow, Helechawa, Mousie, Whoopflarea, Thousandsticks , Black Gnat, Eighty Eight, Fancy Farm, or Thealka. Colorful names inspire colorful stories. For the most part the stories that follow are my retellings of traditional tales that I've been collecting for more than forty years from people who lived at or near the places they refer to. The few exceptions are published tales known to nearly all students of Kentucky literature. Whether these accounts are true or not does not really matter here. Historians who may be concerned with authenticity or documentation are referred to the appendix, where the sources of these stories are given, or to my earlier book, Kentucky Place Names (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), where more factual accounts of some of these and many other names are presented. I have often been asked why Kentucky (like other states) has so many odd names. Since there seem to have been only so many suitable names to go around, and since the U.S. Post Office Department has had a rule restricting a name to one place per state, namers have had to be very imaginative to come up with unique names. Then too, early namers seldom had the time to sit down and deliberate at length on the pros and cons of different names to find the one most suitable. Places had to be named quickly, often as soon as discovered or settled, so they could be identified on land deeds or placed on early maps. Government mapmakers, when they wanted to name a stream, for instance, would ask the first settler, who usually lived 2 RED HOT TO MONKEY^ EYEBROW at its mouth, what it was called. As he was still unpacking his bags, or felling trees to build his home, or preparing his cropland , he hadn't yet thought of a name. Under pressure he might suggest the first name he could think of—his own or that of the first animal or grove of trees he had seen on its banks. Or he would recall fondly his old home back inVirginia or North Carolina . Or he might suggest Mill Creek because he was planning to build a mill there. If he wasn't quick enough, though, the mapmakers might make up a name for him, and then he and those who came after him would be stuck with it. Or maybe they wouldn't be. After all, Kentuckians are more than willing to change with the times. New people will move to a place, decide they don't like its old name—it has no particular meaning to them—and change it. The mapmakers may not care for the change because of the expense of revising their maps. But so what? For years many a Kentucky place has had several names—the official name that appears on the government maps and one or more names that local people have preferred to use at various times and for various reasons. We Kentuckians have always known how to laugh at ourselves and our neighbors, making light of experiences that might try less sturdy types. Thus many of our names recall difficult times making ends meet or adjusting to new environments. We weren't above naming a place Poverty or some other "po' mouthing" name like Hardscrabble, Lickskillet, Needmore, Hungry Creek, Possum Trot, or maybe Pinchem. Frustrations over environmental hardships have led to naming some of our wildest streams after the devil. Or we would call them Troublesome or Difficulty or Stinking. Telling jokes, especially on our neighbors, has been another source of names. How else could we derive Pactolus from a fictional Mr. Toll's favorite ass named Pac, or No Business Creek from the reclusiveness of some of its residents? We're sentimental, too. An Eastern Kentucky coal town was INTRODUCTION 3 named Beauty (though actually it was named for a brand of coal). We've also had our Paradise, our Eden, our Morning View, and our Sunnybrook. High hopes for the future have given us such names as New Hope and Enterprise. Our sense of virtue and honor gave us Humility and Honesty. Family names have comprised at least half of all Kentucky settlement and post office names. Some of them, like Coldiron, Lovely, Barefoot, Mount...