Wait… Are These Town Names Real??

While we were out on the Outer Banks you would think that the names and locations we were going to were made up. They sounded more like characters in a pirate story – turns out each of the names has an interesting story and here are a few that we learned on our trip. 

Let's start with Nags Head.

Legend has it that pirates tied lanterns to the necks of horses—or "nags"—and walked them along the dunes at night. Sailors offshore mistook the moving lights for ships safely at anchor, only to steer directly into the shallow sandbars of the Outer Banks. After the inevitable shipwreck, pirates would loot the cargo.

Whether this is a true story or not it definitely made our car ride reading about it that much more interesting! 

This name makes you do a double take – The leading theory traces the name back to rum. (of course) In the early colonial days, drinking water wasn't always safe, so imported Caribbean rum became a common alternative. There was a popular belief that if someone drank too much and became sick, it was because "the devil" inside them was causing harm—and a strong enough rum could quite literally "kill the devil."

This one is probably one of the most famous cities on the Outer Banks but did you know where the name came from? Me either.

Kitty Hawk comes from the Native American Algonquian word Chickahawk, believed to mean something close to "place of the goose" or "where geese gather." Over hundreds of years, English settlers gradually transformed the pronunciation into the name we know today.

It's also forever linked with the Wright brothers, whose first powered flight in 1903 made Kitty Hawk famous around the world.