"Hi, I'm from Hades!"

I saw a few minutes of a new television series last night called "Jericho". It seems to be about a small town near Denver that can't figure out what has happened after they see a large mushroom cloud in the direction of Denver. Although the storyline might be interesting, what caught my attention was the name of the town -- Jericho.

As far as I know, the name "Jericho" comes from the city destoyed by Joshua and the ancient Israelites when they marched around it until the walls fell down on the seventh day at the trumpet's blast. The conquest of Jericho was part of Israel's conquering and destruction (at God's instruction) of the native peoples of the the land God had promised to Israel. WHY WOULD YOU NAME YOUR TOWN AFTER THAT?

OK, OK, it's just a TV show. But I went to mapquest and found TEN "Jerichos" in the United States, in Arkansas, Indiana, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Connecticut, and two each in New York and Alabama.

This naturally got me thinking about other crazy names for towns. Here's a partial list of what I found just in the United States: Hades Creek (3), Hades Lake (3), Hades Knoll, Sodom (8, mostly in the Northeast, but no Gomorrahs!), Troy (10), Styx (2, maybe for the band?), Charon (he was the ferryman across the Styx), Andalusia (an Anglicization of the Moorish name for Spain; an odd choice for cities in Alabama, Illinois, Florida and Pennsylvania), Nineveh (8, though they did repent following Jonah's preaching), Hell (it's in Michigan, as it turns out), Pompeii (also in Michigan), Babylon (2), Napoleon (8), Devil (9 derivations), Satan's Kingdom (2, neither one in a red state), Lucifer, Beelzebub (I almost didn't even look for that one), Cain, Pharoah, Hitler (his pond is in Ohio, apparently), and Frankenstein.

It must be difficult to come up with a name for a new town. I've had to help name a school, two churches and two children, so I have some sympathy with the town fathers of these places, but . . . what the Hades Creek were these guys thinking?