BOOK MARK

Place names - a new book

The IPKat has only just heard about Mark Monmonier's book, From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame. Published by the University of Chicago Press, it not only explains the origins of place names as curious as Brassiere Hills, Alaska and Molly's Nipple, Utah (below, left), but also reviews the decreasing willingness of mapmakers to accept local preferences for place names in the wake of sensitivity to racially, ethnically and scatalogically offensive toponyms.

Says the IPKat, given the importance of place names in branding and in trade mark registrability, this books looks like a great work-avoidance ritual. It's also a snip at US$25.

Weird and wonderful place names here and here
European Court of Justice ruling in Chiemsee on the registrability of place names here