Fitful Head, Tongue of Gangsta, The Trip: Shetland and Orkney have some wonderful place names. Steve Goldman has done a wonderful job of collecting them.
Strange Maps picks out some of the best of them:
Somehow, the Banks of Runabout sounds vaguely like a critique of the financial sector. And the White Stane of Willies might as well have been mentioned in the lewd paragraph. The Taing of the Busy? That’s that faint ringing noise that gets inside your head when you’ve been up for 24 hours straight. Also known as the Head of Work. The Knowes of Euro? The Candle of Sneuk? The Riff of Wasbister? We sort of know what half the name means. But how frustrating to have not even the glimmer of a clue about the Neven o’ Grinni, the Sinians of Cutclaws, the Glifters of Lyrawa, or the Quilse of Hoganeap.