Americans Just Discovered There’s A Town Named ‘Dildo’ In Canada And This News Segment Is Priceless


I realized years ago that there isn’t going to be a time in life where I’ve ‘grown up’ and can no longer laugh at sophomoric jokes. I’m a simple man, I see a ’69’ joke on Twitter and I throw it a ‘nice’.

Jimmy Kimmel is cut from the same cloth. He’s 51-years-old, a father to four children, but he’s still totally entertained by the fact that there’s a town in Canada named ‘Dildo’. It’s unclear if Canada has been hiding their Dildo from Americans because they knew how funny we’d find it, and when I say ‘Dildo’ it’s not pronounced some strange way, it’s pronounced the same as the name of the popular sex toy.

Dildo is found on the island of Newfoundland and has a population of nearly 1,200 residents. Kimmel found a random news segment from Dildo where they keep saying the name and I’ll be honest, it feels like Canada’s been holding out on us with this one. We need more Dildo news.

Whether or not Dildo, Canada was named after the sex toy remains to be seen. Here’s what the Wikipedia entry has to say about the origin of the name:

The place name “Dildo” is attested in this area since at least 1711, though how this came to be is unknown. The origin of the word “dildo” itself is obscure. It was once used to reference a phallus-shaped pin stuck in the edging of a row boat to act as a pivot for the oar (also known as a “thole pin” or “dole pin”). It was used as early as the 16th century for a cylindrical object such as a dildo glass (test tube), for a phallus-shaped sex toy, as an insult for a “contemptuous or reviling” male, and as a refrain in ballads.

The name, then written as “Dildoe”, was first applied to Dildo Island, located offshore from the present-day town of Dildo. This use was recorded in 1711 and 1775, and the name was thereafter applied to the Dildo Arm of Trinity Bay and other local physical features. Social scientist William Baillie Hamilton notes that Captain James Cook and his assistant Michael Lane, who mapped Newfoundland in the 1760s, often displayed a sense of humour in the place names they chose,[citation needed] and were not above selecting names that might offend over-sensitive readers. Regardless of the origin, the name has brought the town of Dildo a measure of notoriety. In the 20th century there were several campaigns to change the name, though all failed.

It sounds to me like they named it after the sex toy because they found it funny and wanted to get a rise out of people back then but it’s still unclear if the chicken or the egg came first…pun intended.

Dildo’s home to an abundance of marine life including whales, seals, and a healthy supply of Cod (fish). If you’re thinking about making Dildo Island your next vacation destination you can click here to scroll through the location tag on Instagram to get a feel for the sparsely populated area.

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Cass Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of BroBible. Based out of Florida, he covers an array of topics including NFL, Pop Culture, Fishing News, and the Outdoors.