For Little Rock Public Radio, this is Dan Boice, with Naming Arkansas.
What do the Stone County town of Timbo and the Izard County town of Jumbo have in common? Both were supposed to be named for men named Jim but nicknamed Jimbo. Part of the problem is, no doubt, because a cursive capital J looks a lot like a capital T, but some of it must be put down to really bad handwriting.
In Izard County, a town was supposed to be named in 1891 for Jimbo Smith, but the postal authorities read the name – and so recorded it officially – as Jumbo, and so it remained for sixty years. In neighboring Stone County, the postmaster sent in his 1886 request to name the town for his brother, James “Jimbo” Maloy, and the confused postal authority read the J as a T, and so gave us Timbo. While we don’t know how the two Jimbos felt about the errors, for many years, Northern Arkansas provided America with both a Jumbo and a Timbo.
For the University of Arkansas at Monticello, this is Dan Boice