One of the categories I created for Jeo-Party this week I titled "Profanicities", my very own portmanteau (beafter!) for "profanities" and "cities". It was inspired by a tidbit I learned on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" a few weeks ago about the city of "Bitche" in France. Apparently the city had its Facebook page accidentally deleted for violating Facebook's terms and conditions for using profanities. I googled the city and the headlines of the news stories about this were hilarious: "Life's a Bitche" and "Facebook pulled the page for Bitche because it was not Nice" (get it, the city of Nice in France?!? hahahaha). I also learned a few fun facts about Bitche:
- The city was named for an old stronghold standing on a rock 250 feet above the town called "Bytis Castrum".
- The inhabitants of the commune are known as Bitchois and Bitchoises.
I eventually ended up on a list at Wikipedia called "Place names considered unusual" where I learned of a bunch more cities with profane-sounding names. Other fun cities in France:
- "Condom" which comes from the Gaulish words condate and magos combined into Condatomagos, which means "market or field, of the confluence".
- "Pussy" derives from the Roman personal name Pussius, which refers to the owner of the place in the Roman era
I delighted in finding all these fun city names, and I have enough of them for several Jeo-Party categories. My favorite part was trying to figure out the derivations of the towns' names, like a detective with a puzzle to be solved.
With delight,
♥Jamie
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