The town of what?!(NATIONAL) (US places with derogatory names)

• Author: Potenza, Alessandra

More than a thousand place names that many find offensive still dot the American landscape. Should they be changed?

Take a careful look at your state map and you might be shocked by some of the names you see. In Pennsylvania, there's Jewtown; in Texas, you can visit Dead Negro Draw; in California, you can swim in Chinaman Creek; and in Minnesota, you can camp near Cripple Lake. The list goes on and on.

The American landscape is dotted with well over a thousand names many find offensive. They date back decades or even centuries and usually relate to local minorities who lived there alongside whites, who made the maps. Many of the labels are widely considered demeaning now if they weren't then, but once recorded on official maps, they stuck. A recent analysis by the news website Vocativ found at least 1,441 places in the U.S. with names that could be offensive to African-Americans, Native Americans, Italians, Mexicans, Chinese, and Japanese.

"The names were put on maps at a time when society was less sensitive," says Mark Monmonier, a geography professor at Syracuse University in New York. "So they picked a lot of names that later on became pejoratives."

Many of the objectionable monikers are in such remote areas that they go largely unnoticed. But once in a while, some draw attention, sparking debate about what is offensive and whose history should be reflected in place names.

Last year, Montana made headlines when a state legislator proposed eliminating names of springs, creeks, and lakes that include half-breed and breed, pejorative terms usually used to describe Native Americans. In Grant County, Oregon, a heated debate has been going on for six years over a spring, a rock, three meadows, and several creeks with the word squaw in their names. The term, which has been in the English language for almost 400 years, probably derives from ancient Native American words for woman, but many American Indians consider it disparaging.

"A lot of non-Indians don't think they're being derogatory when they use the s-word," says Teara Farrow Ferman, an Umatilla tribe member in Oregon. "But there's a history of it being used as a slur, and most of us hear it that way." But many local officials and residents insist that the term is fine and that the names proposed by Native Americans--like Saykiptatpa and Nikeemex--are too hard to pronounce.

"Seriously, can you pronounce them?" says Boyd Britton, a Grant County commissioner. "It's a safety issue. Someone...