Welcome to Alligator: Here's 15 weird Mississippi town names and the stories behind them

Place names hold many important purposes. Think of all the things they do.

They illustrate culture, heritage and describe the landscape. They help officials with census-taking, figuring property rights, carrying out regional planning, producing maps and facilitating mail and news services.

In Mississippi, there are some well-known place names like Jackson, Hattiesburg, Meridian and Biloxi. And then there are the weirder ones — Chunky, Shivers and Alligator.

According to the World Atlas, a place name can depend on its geography, history or culture. There's always a story behind a name that has been given to a place.

Here's a look at 15 of the weirder place names in Mississippi and how they came about. We stayed away from some of the better-known strange names like Hot Coffee — named in the 1800s for having the best coffee for traveling wagoneers or Nitta Yuma — a Choctaw name — perhaps meaning sweet bear meat  — now home to a 6,000-piece doll collection.

Alligator

This name sounds just like what it is.

According to Scratch Ankle, USA: American Place Names and Their Derivation, the town gets its name from a nearby lake — Alligator Lake — which once had a large population of alligators.

Some mildly famous people came from Alligator, like Tony "Alligator"  Bennett, who —according to NFL.com — played defensive end for eight seasons, in the 1990s, with the Indianapolis Colts and Green Bay Packers.

Alligator is a town in the northernmost part of the state in Boliver County.  According to the U.S. Census, it had a population of 187 in 2018. City-Data.com says 68.2% of those residents are living in poverty.

Arm

You probably won't find many towns named after body parts. Well, this one isn't either.

According to Mississippigenealogy.com, Arm is located seven miles southeast of Monticello in Lawrence County and was founded in 1905 after the G & SI Railroad came through town.

It is named after W.J. Armstrong, a citizen who owned land near the railroad.

"It's a small community — not very many houses," said District 5 Supervisor Archie Ross. "It you bat your eyes coming down (Mississippi Hwy.) 43, you'll miss Arm."

Indian Country Today reports Arm was home for some time to "Texas" Rose Bascom — a rodeo girl popular in the 1940s. She was the first female inducted into the Mississippi Rodeo Hall of Fame. She later moved to Southern California to make movies.

Bascom's talents were many. She could twirl a rope in her right hand, another in her left and a third in her toes or teeth.

Bude (pronounced byood)

Bude is a town in Franklin County, but Bude is also a town in Cornwall, England.

According to Franklin County information on its communities and towns, it was founded by European Americans in 1912 and named for the former English seaside resort town  where F.L. Peck, wife of one of the founding citizens used to live.

In the 1990's, town resident Gloria Frost took a trip to Bude, England to find out some of the town's history. She didn't discover much, except that the English version is beautiful.

"It's a lovely place, I can tell you," she said. "The beaches aren't like Mississippi beaches.

"The beaches are rocky."

Frost figures Bude, Mississippi was indeed named after Bude, England or after F.L. Peck's dog — whose name was also supposedly Bude because she missed her homeland.

Bude is located in the fourth least populous county in Mississippi — near the southwest corner of the state. According to the U.S. Census, it had a population of 1,015 in 2018.

Busyton

Busyton is a lightly populated, unincorporated community in Calhoun County.

According to Hometown Mississippi, by James Brieger — noted at Rootsweb.com —Busyton was established around 1865 and was named after a store in town.

Sometime after 1905, when Mississippi Hwy. 9 was improved, J.T. Ivy built a store on the highway, called it Busyton and the town's name was born.

Story continues after photo gallery.

Ecru

Ecru means beige.

Established by Col. William Clark Falkner — the great grandfather of author William Faulkner and a railroad man —  he may have had an affinity for the hue or the railroad station. 

According to the WPA Guide to Mississippi, the town was named after the color of its railroad depot.

Ecru — population 1,039, according to 2018 Census figures — is located in northern Pontotoc County along Mississippi Hwy. 15.

Its claim to fame?  It's home to an Ashley Furniture distribution center — one of only 15 in the United States.

Guntown

You'd think with all the Civil War history in Mississippi, this town's name would have to do with guns — but maybe not.

According to Frank Gallant's "A Place Called Peculiar," the community was most likely named after James Gunn — one of its original citizens.

Though the town takes its name from a pioneer citizen, its water tower features its moniker with two guns above it.

Guntown's mayor Gary "Bud" Herring has a different story.

"There are several different rumors," he said. "The Board of Geographic Names in 1841 mentions a man named Layton Thomas who started a general merchant store that was the only gun shop in the area and that was where the name was from.

"I believe that is the correct (story) I gave you."

Guntown is located in Lee County and had a population of 2,770 in 2018.

Mhoon Landing

According to the Memphis District Corps of Engineers, Mhoon Landing is located at Lower Mississippi River mile 687.6 on the eastern bank in Tunica County.

It was named after Feyton Mhoon, an African American settler, who each night would take his wagon north to Rabbit Island and place a lantern in the lighthouse for riverboats to see.

In 1992, the first casino in Northern Mississippi —  Splash Casino — opened there to great fanfare — with lines of people paying $10 to get in. It closed three years later and the site is now largely abandoned. Several other casinos opened, but then moved on.

Now, according to Tunica Parks and Recreation, Mhoon Landing Park — located along the Mississippi River — has taken the casinos' place with several picnic areas, a walking track and a playground.

Money

Money is a tiny village in LeFlore County with a population of less than 100 people.

According to Gallant's "A Place Called Peculiar," there are plenty of places in the United States with names having to do with money.

There's Dollar's Corner, Michigan — named after the Dollar family, and Dollar Lake, California and Oregon — named for their shape.

But Money, Mississippi is probably named after a U.S. Senator from Mississippi —Hernando DeSoto Money.

Money has a sad history. It's the site of the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till by white men, who were acquitted of the crime, but later admitted to it in a 1956 Look magazine article.

Panther Burn

The old wives tale for this place name — still circulated today — is that a panther was terrorizing the town and the residents caught it, put it in a barn and set the barn on fire. While watching the blaze, they yelled "Burn panther burn!"

Another story involves plantation owners in the 1860s who were clearing land for farming and settlement. They used brush fires — supposedly causing panthers to run from fire to fire seeking shelter.

Not the case. According to SayWhyDoI.com, terms like burn are often seen at the ends of names like Melbourne or Blackburn. They come from the Old Anglo-Saxon English word meaning brook or stream, which Panther Burn has.

Perhaps, a panther was seen in the area, too.

Petal

Could this Forrest County city be named for part of a flower? No.

With a 2018 population of 10,674 in 2018, according to the U.S. Census, the place gets its name from a post office.

Jim Forte's Postal History dates Petal's first post office to 1903. It was named after the daughter of the first settler.

It is reportedly the only city in the United States with the name.

"I've never tried to verify it," said Petal Mayor Hal Marx. "But I've always heard that.

"It seems to be what everyone thinks."

Rolling Fork

Rolling Fork's name makes sense — when you find out where it came from. 

According to Genealogy Trails — Sharkey County Biographies, William Chaney, a Louisiana doctor, settled Rolling Fork. Legend has it, he named it after a fast rolling part of a fork in a creek.

Rolling Fork is the seat of Sharkey County. It is home to the Mont Helena plantation — one of the state's most famous examples of homes built atop Native American mounds.

Located on Mississippi Hwy. 61 — the Blues Highway — it hosts two popular festivals, according to Mississippi's Lower Delta Partnership.

The first is the Great Delta Bear Affair and the other is the Deep Delta Festival.

The Great Delta Bear Affair celebrates a bear hunt involving President Theodore Roosevelt that reportedly eventually led to the name "teddy bear."  The second is all about Rolling Fork's Delta heritage.

Shivers

A Mississippi town where it's actually cold? No, that's not where this name came from.

Shivers is an unincorporated community located in Simpson County.

According to the Simpson County Historical and Genealogical Society, it got its name in 1886 when Evan Shivers went to apply for a new post office. He put the name of the town down as Salem, but the U.S. Post Office changed it to Shivers.

When asked whether the community was a village and to state the number of inhabitants, Shivers exhibited his odd sense of humor and wrote "cemetery."

Derived from Indian names:

Here are some unusual Mississippi place names derived from the language of the Choctaw Indians.

According to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians website, in the 16th century the Choctaw were living in the southeastern United States, largely in the area that was to become Mississippi.

Many places were named by the Choctaws, said Jay Wesley, director of the Department of Chahta Immi — the cultural department of the tribe.

"A lot of these names were Choctaw names," he said. "They painted the places, events and history in the state of Mississippi.

"We had areas of concentration of family members or clans. Where these people lived — they gave names to places at that time."

Here are three unusual ones:

Chunky

No, this has nothing to do with body size.

Keith Baca, archeologist and project coordinator with Mississippi State University and the author of the book, "Native American Place Names in Mississippi" said it has to do with a creek and a bird.

"It's probably named after Chunky Creek — three miles east of the town of Chunky," he said. "According to some Choctaw Indians, the name is from the Choctaw for "martin" — the bird."

The martin used to nest in the area.

Baca said there is an erroneous belief that the name is from the game chunky — played with a stone disk and a stick with a crook at one end. The town was said to have an especially nice chunky yard.

But the Choctaw word for the game is "achubi."

According to the "History of Chunky," it is located in Newtown County. U.S. Census figures from 2018 put the population at 319.

Duck Hill

This was probably translated into English from the Choctaw language, Wesley said. According to the Economic Development Partnership of Montgomery County, Chief Duck, medicine man and chaman, lived in the town — some say at the top of a hill. 

You can still see tributes to Chief Duck today. His statue stands right next to a red Illinois Central rail car — a railroad which also used to make a stop in town.

The town has seen better days with most of its citizens using it as a second home, said Sue Stidham, director of the county Economic Development Partnership.

"Duck Hill is a small community," she said. "Most of its businesses have left. 

"There's still a bank, a hardware/farmers' needs store and a convenience store. The schools were consolidated with the county schools a few years back."

Tchula (pronounced CHEW-luh)

Baca said Tchula is chula — Choctaw for "fox." 

"It is probably named for the nearby Chula Lake or the Chula Tribe," he said.

But it could also be "chulha" — meaning "split" or "marked." Then it might mean some kind of marker to serve as a boundary.

The town was settled in 1883 and is located in Holmes County, Mississippi. According to 2018 U.S. Census figures — the population is 1,970.

A clarification to this story. A source different from the one used to report on the origins of the name Rolling Fork attributes the name to Thomas Young Chaney.

The Clarion Ledger contributed to this report.

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Contact Ellen Ciurczak at eciurczak@gannett.com. Follow @educellen on Twitter.