No Snickering: That Road Sign Means Something Else

Russell Bates/Ross Parry Agency

The “Butt” in this road, in South Yorkshire, probably refers to a container for collecting water.

CRAPSTONE, England — When ordering things bytelephone, Stewart Pearce tends to take a proactive approach to theinevitable question “What is your address?”

Hazel Thompson for The New York Times

Pratts Bottom, a village in Kent, is doubly cursed because “prat” is slang for buffoon.

John Nguyen/Ross Parry Agency

If you’re smirking at this sign, you’re mispronouncing the town’s name. It’s PENNIS-tun.

He lays it out straight, sothere is no room for unpleasant confusion. “I say, ‘It’s spelled“crap,” as in crap,’ ” said Mr. Pearce, 61, who has lived in Crapstone,a one-shop country village in Devon, for decades.

Disappointingly,Mr. Pearce has so far been unable to parlay such delicate encountersinto material gain, as a neighbor once did.

“Crapstone,” theneighbor said forthrightly, Mr. Pearce related, whereupon the person onthe other end of the telephone repeated it to his co-workers and burstout laughing. “They said, ‘Oh, we thought it didn’t really exist,’ ”Mr. Pearce said, “and then they gave him a free something.”

In the scale of embarrassing place names, Crapstone ranks pretty high. But Britainis full of them. Some are mostly amusing, like Ugley, Essex; EastBreast, in western Scotland; North Piddle, in Worcestershire; andSpanker Lane, in Derbyshire.

Others evoke images that may conflict with residents’ efforts to appear dignified when, for example, applying for jobs.

Theseinclude Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Titty Ho, Northamptonshire; Wetwang,East Yorkshire; Slutshole Lane, Norfolk; and Thong, Kent. And, in acountry that delights in lavatory humor, particularly if the word“bottom” is involved, there is Pratts Bottom, in Kent, doubly cursedbecause “prat” is slang for buffoon.

As for Penistone, a thriving South Yorkshire town, just stop that sophomoric snickering.

“It’spronounced ‘PENNIS-tun,’ ” Fiona Moran, manager of the Old VicarageHotel in Penistone, said over the telephone, rather sharply. Whenforced to spell her address for outsiders, she uses misdirection,separating the tricky section into two blameless parts: “p-e-n” — pause— “i-s-t-o-n-e.”

Several months ago, Lewes District Council inEast Sussex tried to address the problem of inadvertent place-nametitillation by saying that “street names which could give offense”would no longer be allowed on new roads.

“Avoid aestheticallyunsuitable names,” like Gaswork Road, the council decreed. Also, avoid“names capable of deliberate misinterpretation,” like Hoare Road,Typple Avenue, Quare Street and Corfe Close.

(What is wrongwith Corfe Close, you might ask? The guidelines mention thehypothetical residents of No. 4, with their unfortunate hypotheticaladdress, “4 Corfe Close.” To find the naughty meaning, you have torepeat the first two words rapidly many times, preferably in thepresence of your fifth-grade classmates.)

The council explainedthat it was only following national guidelines and that it did notintend to change any existing lewd names.

Still, news of the revised policy raised an outcry.

“Sniggeringat double entendres is a loved and time-honored tradition in thiscountry,” Carol Midgley wrote in The Times of London. Ed Hurst, aco-author, with Rob Bailey, of “Rude Britain” and “Rude UK,”which list arguably offensive pl
ace names — some so arguably offensivethat, unfortunately, they cannot be printed here — said that many suchcommunities were established hundreds of years ago and that their nameswere not rude at the time.

“Place names and street names arefull of history and culture, and it’s only because language has evolvedover the centuries that they’ve wound up sounding rude,” Mr. Hurst saidin an interview.

Mr. Bailey, who grew up on Tumbledown Dick Roadin Oxfordshire, and Mr. Hurst got the idea for the books when they readabout a couple who bought a house on Butt Hole Road, in SouthYorkshire.

The name most likely has to do with the spot’shistoric function as a source of water, a water butt being a containerfor collecting water. But it proved to be prohibitively hilarious.

“Ifthey ordered a pizza, the pizza company wouldn’t deliver it, becausethey thought it was a made-up name,” Mr. Hurst said. “People wouldstand in front of the sign, pull down their trousers and take picturesof each other’s naked buttocks.”

The couple moved away.

Thepeople in Crapstone have not had similar problems, although their signis periodically stolen by word-loving merrymakers. And their villagebecame a stock joke a few years ago, when a television ad featuring aprone-to-swearing soccer player named Vinnie Jones showed Mr. Jones’scar breaking down just under the Crapstone sign.

In thecommercial, Mr. Jones tries to alert the towing company to his locationwhile covering the sign and trying not to say “crap” in front of hisyoung daughter.

The consensus in the village is that there is aperfectly innocent reason for the name “Crapstone,” though it isunclear what that is. Theories put forth by various residents the otherday included “place of the rocks,” “a kind of twisting of the originalword,” “something to do with the soil” and “something to do with SirFrancis Drake,” who lived nearby.

Jacqui Anderson, a doctor inCrapstone who used to live in a village called Horrabridge, which hasits own issues, said that she no longer thought about the “crap” in“Crapstone.”

Still, when strangers ask where she’s from, she admitted, “I just say I live near Plymouth.”