Census Renames Bevis Lake as 'Butthead'

LAKE STEVENS, Washington – Someone in the Census Bureau may be watching a little too much MTV (search).

Bevis Lake (search), a 5.7-acre body of water in a forested area about 25 miles northeast of Seattle, is now appearing in Bureau records with a different name: Butthead Lake. "That means someone is playing a joke, I think," said Ken Brown, a land surveyor with the state Department of Natural Resources.

Those two names — Bevis and Butthead — are almost identical to the 1990s MTV cartoon show "Beavis and Butt-head," which featured a pair of slacker teenagers who watch music videos and make bad jokes. The pair also had their own 1996 movie: "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America."

Someone at the Census Bureau must have gotten bored and made a joke out of naming the lake, Brown said.

Brown said the department calls it Bevis Lake. The U.S. Geological Survey uses that name on its topographic map.

But the U.S. Census Bureau calls it Butthead Lake in its records.

It's not unusual that a lake has different names, Brown said. Different maps say different things, according to county or state records, for example.

But Brown suspects this case is not coincidence.

"That means someone is playing a joke, I think," Brown said.