• Published 24th Sep 2013
  • 1,230 Views, 15 Comments

A Historical Pun - River Road



How did a town come to be named Ponyville?

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The Pun

The Earth Pony stallion wiped a few drops of sweat from his forehead, smearing the black paint from his hoof into his light brown fur in the process. He put the hammer and the few unused nails back into the toolbox before placing everything under the wooden fence, next to the small pot of black paint and the paintbrush he had used earlier. Then he snatched his Stetson hat from the fence pole to put it back on top of his styled, dark brown mane and took a step back to admire his handiwork.

“Ah thought Ah heard somepony hammerin’ away.” The stallion looked up at the beige Earth Pony mare that was trotting up to him. Her red mane and tail with the streaks off a more washed out red shimmered slightly in the early morning light. Behind her a short path lead up to a small house of simple design, without paint and made from cheap wood, which was surrounded by the wooden fence.

“What are y’all thinkin’, makin’ a racket like that before the sun’s even up.” The mare trod up to the stallion, continuing to tell him off, albeit with a sly smirk on betraying her tone.

The stallion grinned back at the mare sheepishly. “Aheh… Ah’m sorry, Sew dear, but Ah just had the urge to do somethin’ while we’re waitin’ for the apples to grow, and then Ah got this here idea. Ah didn’t wake y’all and the kids up, did I?”

Sew’n Sow gave her husband a warm smile. “Don’t ya worry about that, Pokey; it’s time to get up anyway, there’s still more than enough work to do for us. Now let’s see what y'all have done there.”

Pokey Oaks quickly moved to stand between his wife and his newest creation. “Well, if y’all promise to be really nice and say ‘Please’ Ah might consider lettin‘ ya take a peek.”

“How ‘bout Ah promise not to whack y’all over yer big head?” Sew’n Sow asked, trying to shove her husband away. Unlike their usual joking though, the stallion didn’t move an inch.

“Not so fast, sugarcube. Y’all wouldn’t want to spoil the big reveal, would ya? Ah have a whole small speech thought up for this.”

Sew’n Sow stopped her advance to give her husband a wary look, taking a step back. “Oh no… Ah know that tone of yours. This is another one of yer horrible jokes, ain’t it?”

“Why, I’d never…” The stallion’s sentence trailed off under his wife’s scrutinizing gaze. “…Okay, ya got me here. Ah guess the gig’s up.” He let his head hang in mock defeat.

The mare let out a tired groan, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. She stayed like that for a few seconds before she raised her head again to muster her husband with a crooked grin. “Alright, Ah’m mentally prepared for whatever terrible assault on humor y’all got for me this time.”

“Alright!” Pokey cheered with a wide grin. “Y’all know how the old pony settlers liked to name their towns around certain words; Trottingham, Manehattan, even Canterlot…”

“Uh-huh.” His wife raised an eyebrow at him in suspicion.

“Well, Ah figured that, since we’re miles away from other ponies down here, this little farm here practically counts for a town in his own right…”

Sew’n Sow slowly raised a hoof to her forehead again. “Ah dread what comes next.”

“So Ah hereby proudly present to y’all” – the stallion took a step to the side to reveal what he had been working on – “the name of our newly founded town!”

Sew’n Sow blinked once, staring at the pony-height sign that was planted into the ground to the right of the fence’s entrance. “T-That…” the mare stuttered, before letting out a frustrated groan. “That’s even worse than anythin’ I could’ve prepared for. Y’all have plum gone insane this time! Yer nuts, old coot, ya hear me?

“Aww, don’t be like that, sugarcube.” Pokey cheerfully put a foreleg over his wife’s back, pulling her closer, and looked at the sign proudly. “Y’all are gonna see: One day this town is gonna be famous in all of Equestria! The Princess herself is going to visit us regularly and the country’s greatest heroes will be coming from here! Everypony will be proud to say that they’re from this little town, and our farm will be the one that started it all! The very first building of PONYVILLE!” He dropped back to four hooves from the excited pose he had struck, panting slightly after talking himself into a frenzy.

Sew’n Sow couldn’t help but chuckle at her husband’s excited performance. “Well,” she said, chuckling, “let’s hope that it never comes to that. Celestia knows that Ah wouldn’t put it past y’all to go through with this.”

She gave the sign one last glance. The name ‘Ponyville’ was written on it in bold letters with black paint. Below that it read in smaller letters ‘population: 5’.




“…And that’s why this town is named ‘Ponyville’,” Applejack concluded. “At least it’s what Granny Smith always used’ta tell me.” She looked over the various expressions on the faces of her five friends, all of whom were gathered at the library. They ranged from skeptical to amused – or open giggling, in Pinkie Pie’s case.

“That’s… I’m not quite sure what to think of it, actually.” Rarity tilted her head to the side and chuckled lightly. “It certainly is an interesting origin story.”

“Hmm…” Twilight put a hoof to her chin. “I think I remember this story from my history lessons back at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns; though your story was a lot more detailed.” She giggled. “It was a lot more amusing, at least.”

“Well I’ve never heard that story before.” Rainbow Dash was focused on stretching her wings. “I wonder why I never thought about our town being named Ponyville earlier.” She facehoofed, groaning. “And I’m glad I never did, too. That pun gets worse the longer I think about it.”

Twilight started giggling once more. “You know, back in Canterlot there was this rumor that the Princess herself cast a modified background spell on the town’s name to keep ponies from thinking about it too much…” She rolled her eyes “That, or we’ve just gotten used to it over the years.”

Twilight stood up to stretch her legs, levitating a notebook and a scroll over from a table. “Either way, thank you very much for helping me test this story-telling illusion spell, Applejack. I’d say that it was a full success.”

The other ponies began to get up and stretch as well. “Yer always welcome, Twilight,” Applejack said. “Ah never get tired of that story.”

“It really was a nice spell,” Fluttershy said in her usual, quiet tone, but with a hint of awe. “I could see and hear everything as if I was actually there.”

“Yeah, and your great-grandfather sounded like a reaaally fun pony!” Pinkie Pie cheered, happily bouncing across the room.

“Well, I’m glad y’all liked it.” Applejack trod out through the library’s door into the late afternoon, followed closely by her five friends. “Pokey Oaks really was something else. Ah guess that’s where Big Mac got his sense of humor and his loose mouth from.” She continued to trot down the street, humming to herself, completely oblivious of the confused expressions her friends were trading.

Author's Note:

Just a silly idea I got today.

This is definitely my new headcanon.

(And yes, "story-telling illusion" is just a variation of a flashback. It's the fancy term.)

Comments ( 15 )

This looks good :trixieshiftleft:...with this comment I now consider this story to be part of my headcanon :ajsmug:
Applejacks great-grandfather sure was a cool guy

Haha wonderful!

... Huh?

Apart from the names of the ponies, I fail to see any pun here at all.

3263417

The pun is "Ponyville"
At some point in nearly every "not-brony in Equestria" story the guy (or girl) complains about the "unbearable puns". It usually comes down to "any-/some-/nopony", pony names and the town's names, and "Ponyville" is more often than not considered the worst of them all.

As almost all of my ideas, the concept for this one-shot came out of nowhere and just seemed to fit.
Also, there's never enough stories with silly old stallions.

3264561 But... where's the pun?

Appleoosa, Cloudsdale, Manehattan... all of these and the others are puns because they take an existing word, a place-name or horse-breed, and integrate the sounds of another word into it. Ponyville is simply "pony" with the suffix "-ville", which means city or town, attached to it.

An unusual name by the standards of either world, to be sure, but I don't see that it's a pun. If it is, please tell me - what's it punning off of?

3265488

Yeesh, semantics... I suppose it isn't a pun, then, depending on your definition of the word.
All I know is that in many comedy fanfictions with non-bronies, the characters are most likely to complain about "any-/some-/etc.-pony", "Ponyville" and (occasionally) "Pinkie Pie" (though that might actually be unrelated to her name) and that those are generally called "puns" by frustrated (ex-)humans waving their sanity goodbye.

Or maybe I didn't think about it at all, except for "A Historical Joke" just don't sound right

Another fine story :ajsmug:


Still followin ya

3267306

Good to hear, good to see. :ajsmug:

Y'all are probably used to mah random tidbits of headcanon spoutin' by now.

Yeag, thats like 20% of the reason I come here.
And i didn't choose 20% because of :rainbowdetermined2 , I chose it because I chose it.

I failed below. I meant :rainbowdetermined2:

3267319

Well, my greatest work is still all but untouched. Something that was little more than a plot device in my first story and grew into a whole new perspective in my head. I'm going to expand on that soon, once I get out of this bout of procrastination I've found myself in lately... :twilightblush:

This review is brought to you by Zero Punctuation Reviews


I had to mentally prepare myself for this story from just the name alone. ‘A historical pun’ isn’t a eye catching name nor does it say what type of pun is it. Is it the type of pun where the name of the history name is the pun or did the pun make history.

I can say the the author took the 2nd option but I didn’t understand the pun from the story but from the comments. Not to truly spoil the story because we all know if I did spoil the story you would hate me forever and want to kill me, but apparently the pun is how the brony community changes words a lot and non-bronies don’t like that.

Yes, the pun is that non-bronies don’t like what bronies do. My god somepony get a mop because my brain just exploded. See what I did, I used ‘somepony’.

I want to bring your attention to the description of the story and I’ll quote it, “Welcome to Ponyville! Yes, we're serious. No, we're not jokin'. Yes, we're aware that– Listen, you get used to it after a while, okay?”

That gives a better explanation of the pun than the story and when your description of the story gives a better explanation of the main focus than the actual story you should really take a good look at your work and, like my alcoholic third grade school teacher from hell would say, “Do it again but better”.

Lets take a breath from the waters of my criticism. I have seen worse punctuation in a story. It’s good to know that there are still smaller writers that still have a brain in there head. Have you gotten your breath? No? Ok back down into the water we go.

The story gives you a complete u-turn out of nowhere, and you need a fucking u-turn sign for a bloody warning. I was reading the story and out of nowhere it jumps to the present time and tells you that the story so far was actually a ‘story-telling illusion spell’. Yes that what it’s called.

So out of nowhere what I was reading was not happening but a test for a spell Twilight was doing with her friends. I can’t help but feel that this could've been done better, like if it was a spell where a pony becomes a host and the other ponies go into a state of dreaming but they see what the host is thinking. Wait, that has potential, I call copyright of me.

Now to get the tongs of ‘Fuck You’ out because it’s time to get nitpicky.

Rarity doesn’t feel like Rarity in the line she has in the story. She doesn’t say anything about the two ponies in this story-in-a-story. She just says that it is an ‘interesting origin story’. Yes sometimes Rarity can be a brat and be questionable being the host for the element of generosity but that is how she is so I was a bit confused if the author just slapped Rarity’s name on that line, like how a dog looking out a window would be confused if the person in the distance is a random person to be ignored or the mailman to be barked at like it was Hitler delivering the mail.

Also at the start of the story the author puts in the fact that the project the main character is working on is close to his home and this is never touched on again. Yes, it shouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere, but still, without that line I would of already assumed that the project was close to his home. I’m not Bob from down the road that need someone to look at him so he doesn't eat rocks

Well in conclusion don’t come in expecting something revelational like ‘Five Score, Divided by Four’ or something shell-shocking like ‘Cupcakes’. Just come in expecting a small-time, light hearted story which I find quite funny because that is how the Bronies were created.

As silly as the name "Ponyville" sounds in a world of ponies, there's actually a "Humansville" here in the real world.:trixieshiftright:
Wikipedia link:twilightsheepish:

And it's not a pun. It's actually named after its founder: James Human.:twistnerd:

And to prove it's not just someone playing with Wikipedia: City-Data.com:yay:

*Snerks* Very silly. I love his wife's reactions.

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