Bevis Lake the butt of a joke?

It can’t be a coincidence.

A small lake southeast of Lake Stevens has two different names, Bevis and Butthead – almost identical to snickering characters in TV’s “Beavis and Butt-head” show.

“That means someone is playing a joke, I think,” said Ken Brown, a land surveyor with the state Department of Natural Resources.

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.

A popular cartoon on MTV in the mid-1990s, “Beavis and Butt-head” featured a pair of slacker teenagers who watch music videos on TV. When they aren’t doing that, they’re getting into trouble, whether it’s messing with people’s food at Burger World, where they work, or making bad jokes at school.

The 5.7-acre lake is in a forested area southeast of Lake Roesiger and north of Woods Creek Road.

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. He laughed when told the federal government’s name for the lake.

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

“It’s got to be,” he said.

A Web search of geographic names calls it Bevis Lake, adding that it was once called Beaver Lake but was changed to honor a man named William Beavis. (There’s no explanation for the change in spelling.)

Whatever the true name of the lake, it doesn’t seem to matter to the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which owns Camp Brinkly near the lake. The scouts don’t call it Bevis or Butt-head lake. And not because the cartoon characters aren’t very scoutlike.

The organization calls it Brinkly Lake, after the camp, manager Gary Gilger said.

“It’s nothing we make a big deal out of,” he said.

Staff writer Victor Balta contributed to this report.