Dull And Boring: Two Weird Town Names That Go Great Together


What’s life like in a boring town? What’s life like in a dull one? Now a proposed trans-Atlantic collaboration aims to answer this important question.

Boring, Oregon, and Dull, Scotland, want to become sister communities. Local promoters say their towns are neither dull nor boring, and they should play on their weird town names to get more tourism.

One Boring website says the Oregon town of 12,000 is “an exciting place to live” and gets its name from early resident W.H. Boring. It’s unclear how Dull, a small village in Perthshire, Scotland, got its name. Similar words in Gaelic mean either “snare” or “meadow.” Indeed, there are some wonderfully dull meadows nearby. Boring has natural attractions too, including the Boring Lava Field from a boring extinct volcano.

If all this isn’t dull and boring enough for you, check out this list of weird town names. Too bad they missed my favorite, Knob Lick, Missouri!

[Photo courtesy C. Jill Reed]