Within our state's borders you'll find such exotic place names as Amor and Darling, Fertile and Conception, Comfort and Happyland, Looneyville and Nimrod, Flour Lake and the Diarrhoea River, Great Scott and Eureka, Home and Nowhere, Moonshine and Whiskey Creek, Stringtown and Pig's Eye, Snowball and North Pole, Embarrass and Kiester, Coin and Money Creek, and Chickentown and Bull Moose. But how did these places get such unusual names? Wonder no longer as author Michael Fedo relates the curious and prosaic ways in which a place gets named.

Place names tell a rich history of how our...