Toponyms and a Condom

Earlier I mentioned some offensive place names (almost always unintentional). Less vulgar but still not great for a place's public image is something like the French town of Condom. No matter what the origin of the name might be, English speakers will associate it with those birth control items.

Condom is an example of a toponym. Condom comes from the Gaulish words condate and magos combined into Condatomagos, which means "market or field, of the confluence".Condatómagos evolved into Condatóm and then into Conddóm. Condom was first recorded in Latin in the 10th century as Condomus or Condomium. It is where the river Gèle flows into the river Baïse.[

Although the French word for the contraceptive condom is préservatif, in 1995 the town's mayor, taking advantage of the incidental relationship between the town's name and the English word, opened a museum of contraceptives that operated until 2005.

Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of toponyms which are proper names of places,  including their origins, meanings, usage, and types.

Part 2 of this vocabulary lesson is to say that toponymy is a branch of onomastics, the study of proper names of all kinds.

The term toponymy comes from Ancient Greek tópos, 'place', and onoma, 'name'. The Oxford English Dictionary records toponymy (meaning "place name") first appearing in English in 1876. Since then, toponym has come to replace the term place-name in professional discourse among geographers.