Cutesy Name Town

"While the twee small town naming trope is way tired..."

—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Quirky Town, with Eccentric Townsfolk, only there's an adorable name attached to the town as well. Usually some kind of joke/pun is attached to the name. A town with crazy people has some kind of crazy-themed name, a place dedicated to romance will have some romantic name, etc. Frequently seen in a Romance Novel.

Beware; sometimes the cutesy name hides a Town with a Dark Secret. Contrast I Don't Like the Sound of That Place.

Examples of Cutesy Name Town include:

Anime

• At the end of the second season of Hell Girl, there is a town called Lovely Hills. It's not.
• Kibougahana from Heartcatch Pretty Cure. The name translates to "Flower of Hope".

Comic Books

• During the Amalgam Universe event, the comic Generation Hex (a combination of Generation X and Jonah Hex) was set in a town called Humanity. The story was an homage to the film Pale Rider.

Film

• The Quick and the Dead is set in a town called Redemption.

Literature

• Lunacy, Alaska in Nora Roberts's Northern Lights. Naturally, the inhabitants are quirky.
• Wishful, California in the novel Instant Attraction by Jill Shavis, to which the Smart Bitches are referring in the page quote.

Live Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer has Sunnydale, probably the most evil and horrible place in the setting.
• Eerie, Indiana. = weirdness abounds.
• Eureka, anyone?
• Gilmore Girls ' Stars Hollow
• Everwood
• Ed's Stuckeyville
• Pushing Daisies has two of its leads hail from a town called Coeur des Coeurs (Heart of Hearts). Aw.
• You know with the monster attacks and all, the name of Angel Grove seems ironic.
  • Or does it?
• Once Upon a Time is set in Storybrooke, Maine...and the townsfolk don't know they're all fairy tale characters.
  • Most of them don't know. Rumplestiltskin at least knows his fairy-tale name (which makes sense considering how much a part of his tale I Know Your True Name is), and Graham began to remember his life.

Radio Drama

• Fibber McGee and Molly hail from Wistful Vista.

Video Games

• Very, very inverted with Tranquility Lane.
• EarthBound has Onett, Twoson, Threed, and Fourside, in that numerical order.
  • All of the town names in the Japanese version of MOTHER are named after holidays. Including a town named Mother's Day.
• Parodying this trope along with Tastes Like Diabetes is the town of "Honey Mint White Caramel Fudgeflake with Melty Butter and Syrup and Whipped Cream on Top" which is populated by a race of alien bunny people in Magical Starsign.
• Toontown Online. Toon Town has Daisy's Gardens, Minnie's Melodyland, Donald's Dock, The Brrrrrgh, Donald's Dreamland, Goofy's Raceway and Chip n' Dale's Acres.
• What could possibly be threatening about a place called "Silent Hill?"

Web Comics

• Possibly the most literal example: Girly is set in the town of Cutetown.
  • And is right down the road from Cheap Gag.
• A little village up the coast, Pretty Pretty Unicorn. Currently on the way to Kethenecia. The mayor is an undead warlock named Richard. They missionaries didn't know that. Neither did they know the whole village wasn't exactly alive.
• Life Sketch is set in a town named Hannah, in the state of Montana. A place where vampires are socially accepted as members of society.^[1]

Western Animation

• Ponyville. In fact, in Friendship is Magic it's the only town in Equestria that doesn't have some sort of Punny Name.

Real Life

• Accident, Maryland. The story goes that the place was given that name after the surveyor who was supposed to chart out 778 acres of land to build a town on somehow came up about 100 acres short.
• Bill Clinton, from a town called Hope. (..., Arkansas).
• There's a city in Canada called "Happy Valley Goose Bay." This is located in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which collects such names. Other candidates include: Heart's Content, Heart's Delight, Little Heart's Ease, Little Paradise, Cupids, Harbour Grace, Blow-Me-Down, Tickle Cove and Comfort Cove. There's even an advertising campaign for the island centered on cute children standing in front of brightly painted houses (another feature of the island), lines full of drying Guernsey sweaters, and aged fishing boats in towns with these kinds of names.
  • That province also carries the antidote to such cutsey names: the infamous Dildo
  • And in Canada there's also "Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!"
  • Also, Legal, Alberta, and Emo, Ontario.
  • Naming towns odd things is practically a national pastime. It started when we ran out of British cities to name towns after. There are townships such as Elbow, Eyebrow, Pokemouche, Snafu Creek, Blubber Bay, Pickle Lake, Bummers Roost and Jerry's Nose. The world's second longest place name belongs to the township of Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde.
  • There are HUNDREDS of these in Canada. We love them. Due to the Anglicization of many Native names for landmarks, you end up with towns like Lac Aachikamakuskasich, which everyone is expected to pronounce in full. Many towns have been renamed so they don't sound absurd. When Pile O'Bones, Saskatchewan was made the capital of the province, it was wisely renamed Regina.
• Morgongåva, meaning "morning gift" in Swedish. In old germanic tradition, on the morning after the wedding, the groom presented the bride with something valuable, so that she wouldn't be left penniless if he should die. This is the morning gift, or dower. The Swedish town "Morgongåva" is named for a small farm that was once given away in such a fashion.
• Schoenchen, Kansas. In German, "schoen" means beautiful and "-chen" is a diminutive, similar to "-ette". To a German, it sounds like a whole basket of puppies and kittens looking up. And the basket is made of something fluffy. And sugar coated.
• No Name, Colorado. Apparently, when the area was surveyed the townsfolk didn't have a name yet. The surveyor marked it as well... No Name. And there it stuck.
• Inversion: Fucking, Austria. It's about 1500 years old, with a population of 104. Named after a guy named Focko.
  • It's apparently pronounced "fyoo-king". Also, all the signs with the town's name on it are bolted down because tourists kept stealing them.
• Another inversion: there is a town in Norway called Hell; there is also one in Michigan. Oddly enough, both Michigan and Norway also play host to cities named Paradis(e), and one of the ones in Norway isn't terribly far from/is on the same train line as Hell.
• Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico. Named after a cheesy 50s game show, but had a movie made with that title in the 90s that gave it a whole new meaning.
• Santa Claus, Indiana. It was originally named Santa Fe, but there was already a Santa Fe, Indiana so in 1856 the postal service told them to change the name. The (probably apocryphal) story is that at a Christmas Eve church service a child heard bells and shouted "it's Santa Claus!", and the town leaders liked the sound of it.
• There was a popular 19th century poem (which later became a song) called "Ben Bolt", which opened with the line "Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?" In 1904 a town was founded in south Texas, a few miles away from the established town of Alice (named for a daughter of a prominent rancher)...yeah, they decided to call the new town Ben Bolt.
• Carefree, Arizona.
  • Don't forget Surprise.
• Sweet Home and Happy Valley, Oregon. Oregon also amusingly inverts this trope with the towns of Drain and Boring.
• Westward Ho! [sic] is an English seaside resort that got its name from a Charles Kingsley novel that was popular enough to have a town named after it.

1. ↑ and apparently so are dragons, since nobody freaks out when Monguilla shows up in a restaurant.