In the mid-1700s, Mayland settler George Deakins was given 600 acres of land as a debt repayment from England’s King George II. Deakins employed two engineering crews to survey the best land for development. When the crews, who had no knowledge of each other, came back with their findings, they had traced the exact same plot of land. Deakins named it Accident.

George Reeves, the original settler of Hell, Michigan, was known to pay the local farmers in homemade whiskey, and that led to the farmer’s wives saying their husbands had “gone to Hell again” when they were nowhere to be seen during harvest time. Hell was officially incorporated in 1841 and still has its devilish name to this day.

Good Grief’s name didn’t come from Charlie Brown, but rather a marital miscommunication in the 1950s. When a resident bought a general store without telling his wife, she responded with a shocked, “Good grief!” The area, which was known as Addie at the time, has been known as Good Grief ever since.

Sadly, this Utah town of 400 people did not take its name from the beloved red Sesame Street muppet, but its etymology is interesting nonetheless. According to official Emery County records, Elmo was founded in 1908 and was given an acronym for the first four families who settled there: "E" for the Ericksons, "L" for the Larsens, "M" for the Mortensens, and "O" for the Oviatts.

While the name might sound like something out of an Archie comic book, the story of how this small Ohio village came to be called Coolville is a little less awesome than it sounds. It was named after a New England man named Simeon W. Cooley, who was the first to map out the area with his brother in 1814.

In the late 19th century, a local entrepreneur established a general store on a rural stretch of Mississippi road between Natchez, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama. Davis hung a coffee pot-shaped sign outside his store advertising "the best hot coffee around.” His brew was a hit, and the coffee pot became an icon of the area — and eventually lent its name to the spot on the map.

It sounds like a contemplative choice, but Why was actually named, quite simply, after the letter “Y.” State Routes 85 and 86 originally met in a Y-shaped intersection in the tiny southwestern Arizona town, located about 30 miles north of the Mexican border. State law dictated that all city and town names be made up of at least three letters, so the area’s local nickname, the Y, was spelled out.

When this Indiana town was established in 1854, it was called Santa Fe. With the arrival of a post office in 1896, the town was told to change its name to avoid confusion with the existing Indiana town of the same name. According to local legend, as the townspeople gathered on Christmas Eve and contemplated a new name, they took inspiration from the children excitedly calling out for Santa Claus.

The story behind Boring, Oregon’s name is hardly exciting — like many places, it took its inspiration from an early resident (and former Civil War Union soldier) William H. Boring. What is interesting is the 2012 partnership that Boring formed with a Scotland town named Dull. A year later, the town of Bland Shire, Australia, joined the other two to buck their mundane monikers and form the League of Extraordinary Communities.

Where else would you expect to find a town named Jackpot than in Nevada? When Idaho outlawed casinos in 1954, slot machine mavens Pete Piersanti and Don French moved their businesses less than a mile south to the state of Nevada. At first, the area remained unincorporated, and the club owners could not agree on a name. They compromised on the no-brainer name Jackpot in 1959.