Sometimes residents are better off not knowing what their town name means. Anaktuvuk Pass comes from an Eskimo term translated as "dung everywhere." The town is located near an area where migrating caribou gathered.

This one I owe to Frank K. Gallant's A Place Called Peculiar. Seems a fellow named James Ward wanted to move his family out west. He put 'em all in a wagon, attached a sign (Pikes Peak or Bust) and made a very public exit from his hometown – only to have his whole family get homesick in a matter of hours. They returned, Ward opened a store, and for years endured the sarcasm of people who announced they were going to Pikes Peak when they went to Ward's store. A village grew up around the store and the village name was a no-brainer.

Driftwood flows down the Chehalis River and piles up at the mouth in Grays Harbor. A tribe of Native Americans known as the Ho-qui-umpts pictured the harbor as a giant mouth that was hoquiam, an Americanized spelling of an expression interpreted as "hungry for wood," a terrific description.

This town doesn't show up on my road maps, but I found reference to it online, including the West Virginia community listings on epodunk.com. The name looks Native American, but it's really a plea from town residents who wrote to Washington saying, "We want a post office," and joined those first three words to form the town name.

I'd really like to believe this story, but like many others that have been passed down, it is suspect. Anyway, Moses Cleaveland was leading a party in search of the Cuyahoga River, which empties into Lake Erie in the city which later took Cleaveland's name (and then dropped the first A so it would fit on a newspaper masthead). Anyway, Cleaveland was sure he had found the river, only to be later embarrassed – chagrined, even – that he had made a mistake. This smaller river and its falls then became known as the Chagrin.

A group met at the home of Frank Oviatt and decided it was the best location for the town's post office. Next on the agenda: selecting a town name. Oviatt’s young daughter, Ella, was playing in her father’s blacksmith shop. She hurt herself and began to cry. One of the men said they’d name the post office after her if she stopped crying. She did.

The story is that pirates – land pirates, that is – fastened lanterns to a horse's neck and walked the horse on the beach on stormy nights. The horse's gait made the light resemble that of a ship, the idea being to lure other vessels toward shore. Fact or fiction? Who knows? But it's better than being named for an incident in The Godfather.

A delegation of Creek Indians went to New York City in 1790 at the invitation of President Washington for the signing of a treaty. Upon their return home – then Alabama – the Creeks put into their language Nuyaka, their name for New York. Many years later a tiny community in Oklahoma borrowed that name. Today some might consider it an example of reverse confusion. White pioneers have littered the landscape with Americanized spellings of Indian words. Here the Creeks may have created a word to fit the New York City accent ("Yo, I'm a Nu Yaka!")

Railroads and railroad officials figured in the naming of countless towns across the United States, but this name's railroad connection is unique: Ecru was the color of the paint used on the depot. As we all know (don't we?), ecru is a light brown, beige-like color.

Likewise, post offices determined many place names. Often towns took their names from the postmaster (or postmistress), or the names of mates, children, other relatives or friends, sometimes in combination (example: Arletta, Washington. named for Arla and Letty Powell, daughters of the postmaster). Yale, however, was named for the make of lock on the door of the post office building.