Because I grew up in Florida — a rare experience these days, as about two-thirds of the people who live in Florida hail from somewhere else — I have seen a lot of rapid change in the state's landscape. A forest becomes an orange grove and then an apartment building and then that's torn down for a shopping mall which is flattened for a parking lot and then that's torn up to become storage units and so on.

But some things in Florida never change. One of them is how odd some of our place names sound. Florida has some of the greatest place names ever. The Native American tribes that once inhabited Florida left behind some wonderfully mellifluous names, such as Wewahitchka, Umatilla, and Sopchoppy. Some of them sound like euphemisms for your naughty bits, like Yalaha and Okahumpka. Not all of them roll off the tongue so beautifully. A friend of mine claims "Palatka" sounds like "horse poop hitting the ground."

The early settlers threw in some colorful names, too: Tate's Hell Swamp and Zephyrhills, for instance, and, in the Panhandle, Two Egg, best known as the birthplace of Faye Dunaway.

My family claims that one of my ancestors named that one. He was the storekeeper there, letting his customers trade chickens and other livestock for clothing and cookware and other goods. One day, though, he was feeling down about the future prospects of the small community and said, "This town ain't even worth two eggs."

A lot of Florida place names have intriguing little stories behind them. El Jobean was named by its developer, Joel Bean. You see what he did there, right? Nalcrest is where members of the National Association of Letter Carriers, or NALC for short, go to retire.

Some names signal that the settlers felt a little homesick. Dunedin, for instance, was founded by Scotsmen who named it after the Gaelic name for Scotland's capital city of Edinburgh — Dùn Èideann.

Yeehaw Junction was originally known as Jackass Junction, which I think we can all agree would be more appropriate for our state capital. State officials changed the name when the Florida Turnpike cut through there in the 1950s because they thought "Yeehaw" sounded more sophisticated.

Incidentally, the current name has nothing to do with the fact that the historic Desert Inn that's been standing there since 1898 used to house a bordello. More recently a developer tried to change the name to "Destiny," but apparently he was destined to fail.

Because nothing in Florida is ever quite what it seems, it should not surprise you to learn that a lot of Florida place names are fraudulent. The town of Frostproof has gotten quite a few freezes. Hernando Beach has no beach, although they are thinking of building one. Gulfport — previously known as "Disston City," "Veterans City" and even, believe it or not, "Bonafacio" — has no port, and it's not on the Gulf, either, but rather Boca Ciega Bay.

My favorite Florida place name is the one most likely to make Beavis and Butthead laugh. It's in Seminole County, and it's called "the Village of Taintsville." The name, officially sanctioned by the county in 1991, comes from its location between two somewhat larger communities. Local residents explain the origin this way: "Tain't Oviedo and "tain't Chuluota."

A friend of mine who lives near there told me he's visited it once and, as he put it, "Tain't that exciting."

Contact Craig Pittman at craig@tampabay.com. Follow @craigtimes.