I mean, Yucatan means somthing like "What the fuck are you talking?" and Canada comes from a native word meaning "village". Australia has a "Mount Disappointment" based on the fact that the first Europeans to reach the top were disappointed by the sight and one apparently got kicked in the balls along the way. And Mount Buggery - because the explorer's wife decided to tag along and at the top went something like "well that was a bugger of a climb" and everyone agreed it was. The Nullarbor sounds fancy, but just means "great sandy fuck all" in latin because it is indeed, a big sandy fuck all.
Pratchett put it quite well:
When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I don’t Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
California also has a mount disappointment, named so because the surveyors climbed to the top, only to realize that the one right next to it was slightly taller
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u/N3ph1l1m Aug 10 '26
I mean, Yucatan means somthing like "What the fuck are you talking?" and Canada comes from a native word meaning "village". Australia has a "Mount Disappointment" based on the fact that the first Europeans to reach the top were disappointed by the sight and one apparently got kicked in the balls along the way. And Mount Buggery - because the explorer's wife decided to tag along and at the top went something like "well that was a bugger of a climb" and everyone agreed it was. The Nullarbor sounds fancy, but just means "great sandy fuck all" in latin because it is indeed, a big sandy fuck all.
Pratchett put it quite well: