History IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace / RealLife

** Just because the place wasn't discussed in detail: Death Valley. The temperatures reach well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, water is all but nonexistent except in the cacti which have prickly if not poisonous spines, there are venomous rattlesnakes that make their home there, and you can die from heat exhaustion or dehydration in ''minutes'' without the aforementioned nonexistent water. And to make the extremes worse when the sun ''finally'' goes down the temperatures take a ''drastic'' drop at that point it's safe to wander around due to the lower temps but the sudden temperature change can be shocking to visitors. Once in it's ''very'' easy to get lost.

* ''Bahía Inútil'' (Useless Bay), ''Isla Desolación'' (Desolation Island), ''Golfo de Penas'' (Gulf of Grief), ''Seno de la Última Esperanza'' (Last Hope Fjord), ''Faro del Fin del Mundo'' (End of the World's Lighthouse) and my personal favourite, ''Puerto Hambre'' (Port Famine), are all real places of the Patagonia (both Argentinean and Chilean). And they have these names not out of fancy or tradition, they were named out of 100% pure refined Spaniard despair.

** There's a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_%28crater%29 crater]] named Hell in the Moon. However its name, funnily enough, comes from an astronomer and [[{{Irony}} priest]] named [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Hell Maximilian Hell]].

** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hel,_Poland Hel]] in Poland. While the name itself is unrelated to hell, the town is connected with neighbouring settlements by a bus line number ''666''. Some believe this is some sort of intentional pun by local transit authority (a bus to Hel(l) indeed). Another play on town's name occurred during then-US President's George W. Bush visit, when protestors were displaying ''"Bush, go to Hel(l)!"'' banners. Otherwise, it is a popular holiday place among Poles and a former naval base.

* Another Erie Pennsylvania example Misery Bay off the shores of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Presque_Isle Presque Isle]] was named for the post-war hardships that went from 1812 to 1814

*** Tierra del Fuego it is ''still'' called El Fin del Mundo. Because it is.

** Though some characters do share the "dark" meaning and sometimes misunderstood by other Asians speaking different languages. One of the examples is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_O Yam O]] in UsefulNotes/HongKong. While Yam does mean "dark" in Cantonese (and Mandarin, in that matter), it also means "North of the hill and south of water", which is the original meaning of the place name. It does not help that when Disney decided to build a Disneyland nearby, and the government decided to change part of Yam O's name to Yan Ou (a.k.a. Sunny Bay). Disneyfication has taken to a new level.

* The Hindu Kush Mountains means Hindu Killer. At one time, slave caravans full of captive Hindus would traverse these mountains. A sizable portion of the captives didn't make it as was common in the trade.

* Village of Myrkky in the municipality of Karijoki in Finland. The village name is "Poison" in English, and municipality "Craggy River". Ouch.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest Black Forest]] or ''Schwarzwald'', Germany. It is actually a nice place and a popular tourist spot, it got the name because of its extremely dense tree canopy which blocked much of sunlight from reaching the ground.

* Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in Russian it is the same word that is used for Ivan "the Terrible"'s nickname. Both English and Russian languages had changed over time, so "Grozny" isn't usually translated as "Terrible" nowadays. It's more like "Menacing", or, more literally, "Thundering". Still fits here.
* Karmanitsky Pereulok (lit: Pickpocket Lane) in Moscow. Grokholsky Pereulok, also from Moscow, fits unintentionally because it sounds similar to the Russian slang word for murder.
* Vorkuta, Russia, is Nenets for "place is full of bears".

* Nazino Island AKA Death Island/Cannibal Island. The grim moniker comes from the fact it was the place where more than 6000 "undesirables"(read: political prisoners, petty criminals, impoverished peasants, and just about anybody who did not fit into the idealized communist class structure) were deported during the Stalin years to a small, isolated island in Western Siberia and forced to build a settlement. With only flour for food, and little in the way of tools, clothing, or shelter, society quickly collapsed, and thanks to a combination of widespread disease, famine, abuse of power, violence, and cannibalism, more than 4,000 of the deportees died or disappeared.

* A result of a misunderstanding rather than an actual name, when making a military map in Romania, one of the locals was asked by the non-Romanian-speaking mapmakers to identify the names of every single geographic landmark in the region so he can put the names on the map. The local identified several slopes (all called Poala X - or Slope X) but failed to remember one and dropped a "[[PrecisionFStrike pula calului]]" (horse cock). The expression made it on the map.

** Less known is the street ''Niño Perdido'' ([[MissingCHild Lost Child]]) near the Eje Central Avenue, better watch your children there.
** There's also the village of ''Coatepec'', it literally means "[[SnakesAreSinister snake hill]]" in the Aztec language.

** Who can forget the town Wyatt Earp made famous, Tombstone? It's name is ironic, as the town was founded after prospectors were told they would only find their tombstones digging in the area. They found silver instead.

** While ''Tierra del Fuego'' (Land of Fire, literally) sounds like a suitable name like, for example, Hell, it actually was named out of some mysterious fires Magallanes saw in his expedition, which were presumably made by the Shelknam people. But hey, tell that to [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits a bunch of half-crazy half-starved scurvy freezing Spaniards]] crossing one of the [[EverythingTryingToKillYou most hellish]] and [[MobileMaze labyrinthic]] straits in the world, at night, seeing [[LightIsNotGood strange lights]] on the shore while one of them starts to mumble that they [[DoNotTauntCthulhu defied God's will]] and reached the End Of The World, i.e., Hell, and those fires you see are [[TheLegionsOfHell the Army of Darkness]] kindling the fire to make some nice and crispy Conquistador BBQ...

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest Black Forest]] or ''Schwarzwald'', Germany. It is actually a nice place and a popular tourist spot, it got the name because of its [[TheLostWoods extremely dense tree canopy which blocked much of sunlight from reaching the ground]].

* Wrocław, one of the biggest cities in Poland has two intersecting streets downtown: Więzienna ("prison street") and Nożownicza (that can mean both "knife-maker street" and "[[KnifeNut cutthroat street]]". Rzeźnicza ("butcher street") isn't far away. And then there is an entire district named Krzyki ("screams").

*** If one is acclimated to the heat of the Mojave, the temperatures in Death Valley are not difficult at all to deal with, and even in the summer may be cooler than the periodic heat waves that hit Los Angeles. The danger is in getting around the park: It's dozens of miles between one point on another for gas, the nearest gas stations are in Trona, Baker, and Shoshone, there are sharp rocks in the backcountry that can pierce tires, rains during the wet season can wash out roads, there's almost no cell phone service, and roadside service is *very* expensive.

** The "Boca del Infierno" name from ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' is not at all implausible as a colonial name in California, which has no shortage of placenames like "Monte Del Diablo" (Devil's Mountain, or Mt. Diablo as it's now called).

** Less known is the street ''Niño Perdido'' ([[AdultFear Lost Child]]) near the Eje Central Avenue, better watch your children there.

** Back in the AgeOfSail, sailors who rounded the Horn had a saying: "Below 40° S, there is no Law. Below 50° S, there is no God." To this day, even the most well-seasoned mariners regard the Southern Ocean with a certain awe, for very good reasons that would curl your hair.

* Iwo Jima, or in modern Japanese, Iōto. Not only because of the WWII battle, but the name itself means "Sulphur Island", and the landscape indeed is somewhere between FireAndBrimstoneHell and {{Mordor}}.

** [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay It's pronounced "Fook-ing"]] and the entire town is eternally pissed because everybody keeps stealing their signs! They actually changed the town's name to "Fugging" in 2021.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kholat_Syakhl Kholat Syakhl]] means Mountain of the Dead. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident This is where]] nine experienced and professional hikers mysteriously died on a cold night in 1959. They had slashed their way out of the safety of their tent with a knife and fled, some only partially clothed and all without shoes, into the cold night. They were all found close to the camp but in different directions, with one of them having a blunt trauma comparable to the force of a car crash and another without tongue and eyes.[[note]]Ironically, the latter may be the only thing with a plausible explanation, as this is consistent with the patterns of scavenging that one would expect on a body that had been outdoors during that time.[[/note]]] In the Mansi language where the name comes from, though, it has no sinister connotations -- it merely means the mountain is barren ("dead") and not suitable for hunting/foraging. Much more terrifying is the Mansi name of Mount Otorten, the place the unfortunate expedition was trying to get to. The translation? "'''Don't go There'''". [[note]]As for the hikers themselves, most explanations thus far, including that of an avalanche and attacks by local wildlife, have been largely discredited or deemed unlikely. One of the more plausible ones is that ''infrasound drove them mad''.[[/note]]

* RealLife / Literature/TheBible: Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.

** For that matter, Gehenna. It was essentially a giant trash pit. It is also often used as a synonym for Hell. Indeed, its cognate in Arabic, ''Jahannam'', ''is'' the Arabic word for Hell.
** Worse, the reason that Gehenna got its infernal reputation (and the reason it was used for burning garbage) is that area was used as the "sacred" site of a very short-lived cult of Moloch during a time when the Jewish population caved in to foreign invaders and began worshipping other gods. Moloch demanded the sacrifice of children, which is a massive crime in the Jewish ethic. Once the zealots had shown the cultists the door (or the sword), they figured the place was so tainted by the acts done there that the only thing that could be done was turn it into a garbage dump for Jerusalem.

** There's a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_%28crater%29 crater]] named Hell in the Moon. However its name, funnily enough, comes from the astronomer and priest [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Hell Maximilian Hell]].

* Several prospectors have died in what is now Nahanni National Park. Some of them were found decapitated. This is why the park has features named Deadmen Valley, Headless Creek, Headless Range, and the Funeral Range.

* In Southern Alberta, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-Smashed-In_Buffalo_Jump Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump]]. Which is an interesting case of a creepy name that's also ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiu_Keng_Leng Tiu Keng Leng]]. It means "Hanging (neck) Ridge".

** [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay It's pronounced "Fook-ing"]] and the entire town is eternally pissed because everybody keeps stealing their signs!

* [[GoshdangItToHeck Pee Pee Creek]], in southern Ohio. Not too scary, unless you need to drink from it.

** Island of Ormholmen ("Snake Island") next to border of Helsinki. It is a popular camping island.