Did you know that France inherited hundreds of villages with unlikely names? We invite you to discover some of them.
Like Montcuq in the Lot in the Occitanie region, made famous by a sketch by Daniel Prévost in the satirical television show, Le Petit Rapporteur, France has among its municipalities many villages whose names make you smile. Each year, a gathering of “communes of France with burlesque and singing names” is also organized at the initiative of the eponymous association. Decryption of some of these wacky toponyms:
It is sometimes difficult to assume the address for the 76 inhabitants of this commune of the Marne, the Tréconniers. Where does this completely wacky name come from? “They say that one fine day, three local guys went to the prefecture to declare the birth of their village. And when they showed up, we said to them: Hey, here are the three idiots”, Roger jokes, one of its inhabitants, in response to the Parisian. Trécon actually owes its existence to the three hills that surround the village.
This unusual village name dates back to the beginning of the 18th century, in reference to the Gallic character Arnos. As the commune of Haute-Vienne housed a post office on the royal road Paris-Toulouse, the complement “la-Poste” was added to the name. In addition to this bizarre toponym, the village has other assets: its fortified church or the remains of its fortified castle.
This is a very strange name for a commune in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region that produces the Premier Cru des Côtes-du-Rhône in Drôme Provencale! The Vinsobres winegrowers cultivate the vines and produce a wine, defined for centuries by the maxim of Monseigneur de Suarès (1633): “Vinsobres or sober wine, take it soberly”.
We come back to Montcuq and other destinations all the more colorful like La Trique in the Deux-Sèvres, or Gland in the Aisne, in the Hauts-de-France region….
Le Coffin, located in the department of Orne in the Normandy region, is populated by 138 living souls. And La Tombe, in the south-east of the department of Seine-et-Marne, is not a giant cemetery… “We have both feet in La Tombe, but we live well there!” summarizes the mayor of the village Marc Chauvin, for whom the name of the village has “never been a problem”. “The name of the village has nothing to do with the word “tomb” that we know today. In reality, “The Tomb” would come from the Latin “tumba” which means “mound” and it dates back to the 8th century “, relates Virgine Vollereau, communications assistant, at La République de Seine-et-Marne. These two villages could be associated with Deuil-la-Barre in the Val-d’Oise department in the Île-de-France region.
