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

By Robert M. Rennick and Linda Boileau

You can find Paradise in Kentucky—along with many other quirky place names, and the truth (and tall tales) behind them . . .

Encountering some of the uncommon geographical names in the Commonwealth of Kentucky for the first time, visitors and residents alike often assume that some clever or funny stories lie behind them. So they ask, how did Elkhorn Creek get its name? Were the roads to Red River really Hell each way? Did bugs really tussle in Monroe County? Why was everyone whooping for Larry?

To be hospitable and helpful, Kentuckians have come up with convincing?if not always truthful?answers to these and other questions about how places got their names. Some of these stories were clearly not intended to be believed, though a few of them have been anyway. From Red Hot to Monkey’s Eyebrow presents some of the classic accounts of Kentucky’s oddest place names. Complete with map, index, and humorous drawings by Linda Boileau, this handy guide is a geography lover’s delight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9780813146140

Book preview

From Red Hot to

Monkey’s Eyebrow

From

RED HOT

to MONKEY’S EYEBROW

UNUSUAL KENTUCKY PLACE NAMES

Robert M. Rennick

Illustrations by Linda Boileau

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copyright © 1997 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508–4008

010099  5432

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rennick, Robert M., 1932–

From Red Hot to Monkey’s Eyebrow : unusual kentucky place names /

Robert M. Rennick : illustrated by Linda Boileau.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-8131-0931-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Names, Geographical—Kentucky. 2. Kentucky—History, Local.

I. Title.

F449.R44 1997

917.69′03—dc21

97–9905

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America

To Betsy

Contents

INTRODUCTION

UNUSUAL KENTUCKY PLACE NAMES

Kentucky

Some Stream Names

Elkhorn Creek

Defeated Creek

Tearcoat and Illwill

Dreaming Creek and Drowning Creek

Lulbegrud

Lonesome Creek

Mare Creek

Bedstead Branch

Paradise

Morning View

Fancy Farm

Nonesuch

Mousie

Thealka

Feliciana

Rebel’s Rock

Sally’s Rock

Fogertown

Horse Cave

Red Hot

Kettle Island and Kettle

Deadman’s Hill and Deadman’s Grave

Torchlight

Wild Kitchen

Buzzard Roost and Jugernot

Pine Knot

Pinchem

Shake Rag

Needmore

Lickskillet

Rabbit Hash

Bugtussle

Black Gnat

Helechawa

Other Hells

Rogue’s Harbor

Monkey’s Eyebrow

Tidalwave and Troublesome

Blue Hole

Tywhapity

Whoopflarea

No Creek

No Business

Nobob and Nolynn

Bears

Egypt

Decoy

Eight Eight, Seventy Six, Twenty Six, Zero

Letters from the Postmasters

Whynot, Ono, Allagree

Pewee Valley and Pig

Albany

Sweet Owen

Products on the Store Shelves

Crum

Sedalia

Stop, Wait, and Uno

Zachariah

Yield

Buncombe

Fallen Rock

SOURCES

FURTHER READING

INDEX

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 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 in Virginia 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 named Beauty (though actually it was named for a brand of coal).