Oh, yes. I’ve laboured on this topic often. How boring of me. Doubtful Sound inspired Lonely Farm and Lonely Farm inspired Lonely Sound.

But it’s true that these kinds of odd, lonely, wild names awaken something in me that claws to get out. Here are some of my favourites from around the world but mostly the good old mental-case United States of America:

Deception Falls, Washington

Joshua Tree and Ragged Point, California

Accident, Maryland

Bitter End, Tennessee

Hell Gate, Queens

Medicine Hat, Alberta

Nothing and Why, Arizona

Odd Down, Somerset

Rapture, Indiana

Pity Me, Durham (thought to come from the French petit mere)

Dancing Ledge, Dorset

Mount Despair, Montana

They all sound like places where someone would go slowly and dangerously mad from loneliness in a Stephen King novel. Only that would require them to all be places in Maine.