Texas Town Names, humorous and unusual place names. (original) (raw)

If you live in Texas, there are several books on Texas place names. The most recent and one of the best is "Muleshoe & More: The Remarkable Stories Behind the Naming of Texas Towns"by Bill Bradfield & Clare Bradfield. We thought our piece "The Naming of Names" would be an appropriate introduction for the Bradfields' book. Some of these names may be old hat to our Texas readers, but there's bound to be some you haven't heard of, and for our out-of-state readers, here's a collection straight off The Texas Department of Transportation's Official Highway Map for the year 2000.

Railroads were built by men, but they named many towns after their womenfolk. A sampling:

Louise, Edna, Inez, Sarita, Donna, Mercedes, Maybelle and Thalia. Pandora sounds like a place to keep the lid on and Hedley might have been named after a Lamar family member. (name courtesy of Mel Brooks). For people who say bafroom or birfday, there's Marfa as in Marfa Washington. And then there's Maud. There's Winona and Annona, Lydia and Celeste. Idalou was named after two girls, as was Mineola. Desdemonia will connect us to Iago and our other male names:

Gordon, Vernon, Seymour, Chester and Sidney all have a 19th Century sound to them. There's a New Willard, but no sign of an old one, and there's a Smiley, Leroy and Dabney as well. Some towns are both first and last names like George West, who got to name the town since he built it on his ranch. Ben Bolt, the person, has been lost to history, but he's a lyric in a song and the town still wears his name. Tom Ball has become Tomball, Burk Burnett has become Burkburnett and Ed Couch Edcouch. Tarzan was condensed when he got here.

Condense Milk, Not Names!

While we're on the subject of condensing: It's safe to say everyone's heard of Texarkana, and maybe Lake Texoma. But unless you live close to Austonio, you might not be aware it exists. One would think Austonio would be between Austin and San Antonio. If one did, then one would be wrong. It's between Houston and Dallas.

There was a recent movie called Happy, Texas, and indeed there is one. The movie was shot in some other state, though. Speaking of shooting, there are towns of Gun Sight, Gun Barrel City, Point Blank and Cut and Shoot.

There's the modest trio of Elysian Fields, Utopia and Paradise. There's Munday and Friday and Keene's Post Office is open on Sunday*. There's Telephone, Telegraph and Energy. There's Coffee, Coffee City, which is almost as good as Hot Coffee, Alabama, and other food names include Raisin, Oatmeal, Rice and Noodle.

Old foes here are not forgotten

Indian names are well represented with Caddo, Seminole, Comanche and Kickapoo. While we're sure there's no Sam Houston City in Mexico, we've got a Santa Anna in Coleman County. Actually, the town's name comes from local mountains named after an Indian Chief, or so we're told.

One would think Levelland, Horizon City and Sundown would be in a straight line, but they're not. Other names which we hope are only in Texas include: Grice, Latexo, Lazbuddie, Wamba, and Fluvanna.

Texas is not a four-letter word

But these towns are: Alto (Cherokee Co.), Port Alto (Jackson Co.), Acme, Best, Buda, Bula, Buna, Cash, Fink, Grit, Hext, Lawn, Lodi, Nada, Spur, Toco, Voca, Wink and Zorn.

The Naming of Texas Towns

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