[LarpBulaBus]

Poor Des Moines. While I used to refer to it as the murder capital of Iowa I also have referred to it as the oyster capital of Iowa. This latter description due to barges of oysters being shipped up from the gulf and fed to lawmakers in Iowa City in order to promote the change in location of the capital.

Now I had never heard of it as "shitface", Iowa so this is a new one.

LA .. Eat your heart out.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?...earchmode=none

Des Moines
city in Iowa, U.S., named for Fr. Rivière des Moines, the river that flows past it, which traditionally is derived from Fr. des moines "of the monks," in reference to missionaries, but this probably is a fur trappers' folk-etymologizing of a name of the native people who lived there. The place appears in a 1673 text as Moinguena, and historians believe this represents Miami-Illinois mooyiinkweena, literally "shitface," from mooy "excrement" + iinkwee "face;" a name given by the Peoria Indians (whose name has itself become a sort of insult) to their western neighbors. It is not unusual for Indian peoples to have hostile or derogatory names for others, but this seems an extreme case.