Travelers Confronted by a Contrary Knob

 One of my favorite place names is Contrary Knob, a 2,500-foot summit in Garrett County, between Deep Creek Lake and Savage River Reservoir.

I know absolutely nothing about the origin of this name. Was the mountain itself somehow contrary, or did it become synonymous with a contrary person who lived on it?

My ignorance would make this short entry even shorter, if not for the fact that “knob” is vulgar British slang for “penis” – and thus, at least since 1920, has been a British term for “an annoying, unpleasant, or idiotic person (esp. a man or boy),” so that an online search for the phrase “contrary knob” is likely to turn up a lot of insults. 

The use of “knob” as an insult is becoming common in the States, too, and writer Ben Yagoda noted that it spiked online shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, “surely because so many knobs have been acting knobbish in this country in recent days.”

“Maryland’s panhandle comprises a rolling succession of rises with forbidding or antique names,” writer Russell Shorto has noted. Contrary Knob is doubly forbidding, if you take into account the British meaning.  

Maybe this is why Geotargit.com proclaims, “There is one place in the world named Contrary Knob!” So the mountain has that going for it.

I suspect that my fiction-writing colleague Carrie Cuinn was thinking only of the British slang term, and not Western Maryland, when she wrote her merry and charming 2017 cryptozoological short story “Mrs. Lesley and the Campers of Troop 83 Vs the Giant Blacklegged Tick of Contrary Knob.” After all, the story’s only other place name is Red Marble Corner, a home-décor joke. But I doubt Carrie will mind readers envisioning Garrett County as the setting. So the mountain has that going for it, too.

In an age when capitalists stamp the landscape with resolutely upbeat, vapid, generic place names, I value the continued existence of Contrary Knob and salute all who live on it, but I regret that I've heard no reports -- not yet! -- of a giant blacklegged tick.

Sources:

“Contrary Knob.” Mapcarta. https://mapcarta.com/21050036. Accessed 14 Nov. 2021.

Cuinn, Carrie. “Mrs. Lesley and the Campers of Troop 83 Vs the Giant Blacklegged Tick of Contrary Knob.” 2017. Published 8 Feb. 2019 at CarrieCuinn.com. https://carriecuinn.com/2019/02/08/free-flash-fiction-mrs-lesley-vs-the-tick/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2021.

“How many places are named Contrary Knob?” Geotargit.com. https://geotargit.com/called.php?qcity=Contrary Knob. Accessed 14 Nov. 2021.

Shorto, Russell. “On a General’s Trail, Summoning America’s History.” The New York Times. 18 July 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/travel/on-a-generals-trail-summoning-americas-history.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2021.

Yagoda, Ben. “Knob.” Not One-Off Britishisms. 8 Jan. 2021. https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/2021/01/08/knob/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2021.

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