(~5 minutes to read)

(This article is possibly Not Safe For Work (NSFW).)

I have to admit that I’m not aware of ever having visited Scunthorpe. It’s a town in east central England that was (I believe) industrialized in the nineteenth century along with myriad other towns. Being the judgmental type that I am, I’ve never felt compelled to visit the place—just its name puts me off. (Yes, deep down, I’m shallow!) It’s always struck me as grimy-sounding.

Speaking of grime, Grimethorpe is another place that wouldn’t be in my list of Must Visit destinations, for the same reasons. Here in Canada, if Regina had retained its original name (Pile-of-Bones), it too would have been missing from my Must Visit list.

However, it’s amazing what you learn when you research for articles; judging from pictures and articles on the wonderweb, Scunthorpe is a much nicer-looking place than the image my mind conjures up. Granted the steelworks dominates the landscape, but it’s obvious that Scunthorpe’s residents take pride in their surroundings. Grimethorpe seems to have had its share of problems since its coal mine closed, but several regeneration projects have been carried out in recent years to reverse the decline.

What’s in a Name?

When I was in high school we had to create a holiday brochure for a fictitious place for an English (Language Arts) project. Three friends and I created a brochure for Sludgedun on the Scum. I have no idea which of us came up with the name: Kipper, Skinner and Clarky—if you’re reading this and distinctly remember coming up with the name, let me know and I’ll credit you accordingly. (I’ll even use your real names if you prefer!)

In creating the brochure, we cut and pasted (with scissors and glue!) pictures from magazines that reported on the human- and climate-related disasters of the time (Bangladesh, Biafra etc.) to illustrate how well-catered-for Sludgedun’s visitors are and so on, and we typed up articles (on an ancient manual typewriter) to attract tourists to our wonderful fictional resort.

These days, I’m sure we’d be expelled for being so insensitive to human suffering , but thankfully the brochure was judged (and marked) by the standards of the time. I’m proud (or should it be ashamed) to say that I still have the brochure, although needless to say, I can’t find it right now, but when I do, I may scan a sample of its contents and add it here. Then again…

My point in boring you with that story is that names conjure up images. Authors down the ages have used names for their characters that convey a sense of their personality, station in life and attitudes. (Dickens was a master at this—even if you haven’t read David Copperfield, the stepfather’s name—Murdstone—leaves you in no doubt that David’s in for a hard time.)

Scriptwriters have created place names that do a similar thing; examples range from the enticingly-named Sunnydale to the rather damp-sounding Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh to Blackadder’s rather odiferous-sounding Dunny-on-the-Wold. So Sludgedun on the Scum merely followed that pattern. In fact, I used it as the locale for a panto that Mrs. H and I wrote back in the 1980s.

And like Dunny-on-the-Wold and Sludgedun on the Scum, the name Scunthorpe creates negative images in my head. Weary-looking Victorian row housing with no front gardens, factory chimneys visible in the distance above the roofs of said houses, a general air of overcast skies that might bear more than mere rainclouds, and the clatter of hobnail boots on the cobblestones.

My mental image and the reality of Scunthorpe are almost diametric opposites, but I’d written this article totally tongue-in-cheek to this point with the express intention of using a killer pivotal sentence to get to the nub of my topic. However, Mrs. H. read the draft and censored the pivotal sentence.

So with my publishing deadline leaving me no time to rewrite, you’ll have to imagine what that sentence might have been, and deal with the upcoming leap from a discussion about adjectival place names to an explanation of the consequences of the lack of spam filter precision.

Quite the leap eh?

“The Scunthorpe problem” is actually a term that’s applied to a situation in which search engines, spam filters and similar protective software seek to shield us from rude words and in doing so prevent us from conducting valid, innocent searches. Within the name of that place, there lurks what is arguably the worst of the bad four-letter words, and the reason why Scunthorpians (Scunthorpites?) were unable to mention their home town online at one time.

Scunthorpe’s Not Alone

Other examples abound. The English towns of Penistone, Lightwater and Clithereoe have all been the unwitting victims of overzealous filtering software. A type of mushroom was unable to be mentioned for fear of censorship. A certain Doctor Herman I. Libshitz was unable to use the email address of his choice because his name contains the same string of letters that caused problems for the mushrooms. Even the 30th Super Bowl caused problems in some search engines because Roman numerals are used in the names of Super Bowls and XXX (30) is also used to identify naughty website content.

Several counties in the UK have the letters s-e-x in them. The county that I was born in is Essex; there’s also Middlesex and Sussex; Justin Trudeau’s official residence is on Sussex Drive; such names were causing problems with filtering software as recently as 2004.

Words such as beaver, faggot, cock, tit, shag and booby all have perfectly innocent meanings; unfortunately, they also have other meanings that cause various levels of offence, and so the words have appeared on spam filter blacklists in the past.

Immaturity Abounds

Given all the problems that using these words, as well as names like Dick Whittington and Arsenal can cause, why would I choose to write an article about them?

Because despite the level of sophistication to which my sense of humour has ascended in my adult life, I still find all of this amusing.

A Change of Name Needed?

You might wonder why these places haven’t changed their names. My legal surname is Gothard, and I’ve never considered changing it (despite the unwelcome attention I received because of it at school), so why should Penistone or Scunthorpe change their names?

And Wikipedia has an article on unusual place names, some of which raise eyebrows so high that you wonder why the places retain their names, especially when they suffer from road sign theft. Residents of the highest hoister-of-eyebrows, a town in Austria, voted in 2004 to retain their eight-hundred-year-old name, despite the burden of stolen street signs being placed on their tax bills.

Thankfully, spam filters and search engines have grown in maturity over the years (unlike me!) and today, the residents of Scunthorpe may publicize their home town online, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world will be able to search for, locate and read their work.

Now that’s progress.