Each country has strange/funny/unusual names of streets, cities, villages. Both in English-speaking countries and elsewhere you can find places that have names that sound weird to English speakers. And believe me, Poland is no different! There are few really funny/odd/crazy names that keep tourists entertained!

So what to do when you visit a place with funny name? Most of the people take pictures, buy souvenirs ( in some cases the place has indeed turned the name into a tourist attraction and therefore there are funny souvenirs you can buy), connect (often, these places offer a unique postmark for postcards). And last, but not least, respect. The locals are probably tired of hearing jokes about the name of their city. The names were often chosen many years ago, when the words had no double meaning, or make sense locally as the name only looks odd in the English language.

Let’s talk about few of them 🙂

Złe mięso – means literally “bad meat”.

Image courtesy pixabay.com

Well, not too appetizing… The mayor of the place explains where the name possibly came from. Hundreds of years ago there was a great battle in this area, in which many soldiers and many animals died. Corpses spread out on the battlefield. The second version speaks of a dishonest innkeeper who poisoned his guests with old, bad meat. There is also the third legend, the most drastic, even the village leader is silent about it. Apparently the dishonest innkeeper gave his guests … a dish from previously murdered travelers.

Koniec Świata – “end of the world”

Image courtesy pixabay.com

It is a name of the village in Poland. Some people claim that the place was called that when a nobleman travelling on a local road, which abruptly ended, reached its end and cried in distress: ‘It’s the end of the world!’

I guess if there is “end of the world”, there has to be hell…

Piekło – “Hell”

Image courtesy pixabay.com

If you’d like to see what hell looks like before the end of the world, come to Piekło, a village in northern Poland 🙂 Legend says the village owes its spooky name either to the floods which often occurred in the area, turning the life of the inhabitants into a nightmare or to an exceptionally tricky part of the Wisła River, full of twists and turns, which is nearby.

And not far from the hell…there is heaven!

Image courtesy pixabay.com

Niebo (Heaven) is only few miles away from Piekło, and no surprise, more residents here!

Cyców (could translate as ‘Titville’) – Toward the end of the 18^th century, the word cyc was used to describe a certain kind of fabric, known today as percale (perkal in Polish). However, nowadays in Polish the word cyc is almost exclusively understood as a euphemism for a woman’s breast. The name is most probably reminiscent of the percale manufactory that once operated in this village in eastern Poland.

Image courtesy pixabay.com

Last, but not least…

Swornegacie!

Image courtesy pixabay.com

To the average Pole this name means something like… “Dutiful Panties”. In this case the word gacie, which is Polish for “panties”, refers not to undergarments but to gacenie which in the local dialect means to “strengthen the banks of a lake”.

I know that there are many, many more names we could have fun talking about…and unfortunately can’t fit all of them in one post.

Would love to know what was the funniest name you came upon while traveling in Poland?