Kentucky Geographic Names

" From the wealth of place names in Kentucky, Rennick has selected those of some 2,000 communities and post offices. These places are usually the largest, the best known, or the most important as well as those with unusual or inherently interesting names. Including perhaps one-fourth of all such places known in the state, the names were chosen as a representative sample among Kentucky's counties and sections. Kentucky Place Names offers a fascinating mosaic of information on families, events, politics, and local lore in the state. It will interest all Kentuckians as well as the growing number of scholars of American place names.

" Of course you'll find Paradise in Kentucky, but it's only one of the many unusual place names in the Commonwealth. Meeting these names for the first time, visitors and residents alike 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 delight.

In Kentucky, as elsewhere in the United States, both natural and cultural features of the landscape often bear names that are borrowed family names; approximately half of the specific elements in Kentucky's place names are family names. Most names in such a detailed list as Field's are "little" names, to use the late George R. Stewart's appropriate term: names of minor features, little known beyond neighborhoods, and recorded only on large-scale maps. persons commemorated in such place names were almost all local residents or others associated with the localities at the time when the names were given, but otherwise unknown. Usually they were pioneer settlers, and their identities may be forgotten in their old neighbourhoods unless they have left descendants still living there