Maybe naming a town isn’t as easy as it seems

Nicholas Graham’s revelation of Carrboro’s backstory — how UNC president and chemist Francis P. Venable gratefully  handed over title to the town’s name to the way less modest Julian Shakespeare Carr — reminded me of other instances in which North Carolina’s intent to honor the intelligentsia proved challenging:

Conover is named for the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova.

Murphy is named for the North Carolina educator Archibald Murphey.

— And the namesake town of the New England writer Oliver Wendell Holmes gets the spelling right — but calls itself (as acknowledged by the Gazetteer with a rare pronunciation tip) Wen-DELL.

Other examples, anyone?