Brokenwind and Backside included in top ten embarrassing place names

Dull: The Perthshire village showed it had a sense of humour by twinning with the US town of Boring.

Aberdeenshire can lay claim to two of the ten most embarrassing place names in the United Kingdom.

Brokenwind, near Newmachar, finished third in the survey conducted by family history website findmypast.co.uk.

And Backside, located between Dufftown and Huntly, came eighth in the poll, which was topped by Shitterton in Dorset.

Scratchy Bottom in Dorset, Crapstone in Devon and Golden Balls in Oxon also made the top ten.

Other Scottish embarrassing place names which missed out on the top ten include Twatt in Orkney, Gash near Fraserburgh and Butt of Lewis.

Earlier this year the Perthshire village of Dull showed it had a sense of humour by twinning with the US town of Boring.

Debra Chatfield, a family historian at findmypast.co.uk, who carried out the survey, said: “In the course of researching their family history, people can discover that their ancestors came from somewhere with an unlikely, unfortunate or downright embarrassing name.

“True, it’s not the worst thing you might unearth when tracing your ancestry.

“Nonetheless some people are unsettled to discover that their forebears came from somewhere called, say, Crackpot, Ugley or Happy Bottom. It can puncture the magic of making a genealogical discovery.”

Brokenwind is barely a speck on the Aberdeenshire map but does, nonetheless, feature in the genealogical records as the place where one Agnes Bisset died of bronchitis on September 5, 1862. Brokenwind in those days was known as Broken Wynd.

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