MAINE - Whether you are taking a road trip up from New Hampshire, crossing the border from Massachusetts, or driving down from the Canadian border, you will quickly discover that Maine is home to some incredibly bizarre and surprisingly "raunchy" town names. While the Pine Tree State is famous for its incredible lobsters, stunning rocky coastlines, and deep maritime history, whoever was in charge of naming its local municipalities clearly had a unique, and sometimes entirely unintentional, sense of humor.
From hilarious double entendres to accidentally inappropriate-sounding pioneer descriptions, here is a look at the most unusual, head-scratching, and raunchy-sounding town names you will find scattered across Maine.
1. Beaver Cove (Piscataquis County)
You cannot discuss ridiculous Maine geography without starting with Beaver Cove. Located along the incredibly scenic shores of Moosehead Lake, this tiny community is named after a name that inevitably draws a smirk from visitors and sounds like a cheeky piece of adult slang. However, its origin is entirely literal and innocent. The community, which has a very small year-round population, was named after the large population of semi-aquatic rodents that historically inhabited and dammed the area's protected inlets.
2. Dixfield (Oxford County)
Located in the rural stretches of Oxford County, Dixfield possesses a name that sounds uncomfortably like a highly inappropriate reference to male anatomy. Despite the inevitable giggles from teenagers and double-takes from passing road-trippers, the town's naming history is completely respectable and strictly business-related. It was proudly named in honor of Dr. Elijah Dix, a prominent Boston physician and agricultural investor who originally purchased the massive township tract back in the early 19th century.
3. Bangor (Penobscot County)
While Bangor is one of the largest and most famous cities in the entire state, its name is a constant source of raunchy humor for out-of-towners. Because tourists frequently mispronounce the city as "Bang-er," it is constantly the punchline for cheap, highly suggestive jokes. However, the true origin is incredibly beautiful. In 1791, a local reverend named Seth Noble successfully petitioned the state to incorporate the city and reportedly chose the name solely because of his favorite traditional Welsh hymn, "Bangor."
4. Bald Head (York County)
Situated in the southernmost coastal stretches of York County, Bald Head is a small village community with a name that immediately raises eyebrows. While it sounds like a highly suggestive anatomical reference or a slightly awkward physical condition, the reality is a fiercely literal geographic description. The community takes its name from Bald Head Cliff—a massive, prominent, and completely barren rocky coastal cliff that forcefully juts out into the Atlantic Ocean.
5. Misery Gore (Somerset County)
Rounding out the list is an area with a name so bizarre it sounds like the title of a heavy-metal album or a devastatingly bleak horror movie. In traditional New England mapping terminology, a "gore" refers to an odd, unincorporated strip of land left over from colonial-era surveying errors. As for the "Misery" part, local legend claims the area was named by exhausted early 19th-century loggers and surveyors who suffered through incredibly harsh, freezing weather while trying to navigate and map the rugged, deeply unforgiving terrain.
