IN A small corner of Harney County, Oregon, you鈥檒l find a secluded meadow that looks unremarkable but whose name tells a different story. Whorehouse Meadow is where in earlier times mobile madames set up their tents to ply their trade to shepherds. The name stuck until a map of the area was issued in 1968 on which the field was marked as Naughty Girl Meadow. This sanitisation of the area鈥檚 colourful history provoked an outcry. The case was taken to the US federal board responsible for geographic names, and in 1976 Whorehouse Meadow was restored as the official name.
The tale is recounted by geographer Mark Monmonier in his new book From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How maps name, claim and inflame (University of Chicago Press, 2006). His point is that the names reflect centuries of local history. But they can also act as a time bomb: as society evolves so too does people鈥檚 sense of what is acceptable. A century ago, it was common for places in the US to have salacious or derogatory names. Fifty years later, US politicians were embarrassed to find their maps littered with racial and ethnic insults, and banned names such as Jap and Nigger. Thus Niggerhead Point, documented on a 1943 map of upstate New York, became Negrohead Point in a map issued in 1955. When that too was deemed offensive, it became Graves Point.
What of Squaw Tit? This was apparently the name of a topographic landmark near Phoenix, Arizona. Today, Native Americans regard the word squaw as an insult, and are battling with some success to rename places that use it. Other groups attempting to change offensive place names have been less successful: residents of Dildo, a fishing village near St John鈥檚, Newfoundland, have managed to retain the name despite a campaign to replace it with something more tasteful.
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鈥淩esidents of Dildo have kept the name, despite a campaign to change it鈥�
National disputes can also be seriously troublesome when it comes to place names, since, as Monmonier notes, naming geographical features is a way of asserting property rights. Microsoft discovered this to its peril in the mid-1990s when it was refused permission to import a new version of Windows to India because it included a map of the country that omitted the disputed provinces of Jammu and Kashmir.
There is even some debate over the names of uninhabited places. Considering it has no permanent residents, it seems surprising that Antarctica has more than 14,000 official names, all pondered over by committees such as the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names. It is here that you have the best chance of having a geographical feature named after you, but only if you鈥檙e an expedition leader or have performed some heroic act on the ice.
Ultimately, though, maps are about power, and it鈥檚 usually the rich and powerful who assume the right to glorify their culture through the names on its maps.