Is it just a joke that Nome, Alaska was so named because, the place name being unknown, a surveyor wrote '( name)' against it on a draft map but this was misread and taken as Nome ?

No joke, Fred,
Against it's wishes the city was stuck with the unusual name of Nome. Unlike other towns which are named for explorers, heros or politicians, Nome was named as a result of a 50 year-old spelling error. In the 1850's an officer on a British ship off the coast of Alaska noted on a manuscript map that a nearby prominent point was not identified. He wrote "? Name" next to the point. When the map was recopied, another draftsman thought that the ? was a C and that the a in "Name" was an o, and thus a map-maker in the British Admiralty christened "Cape Nome."
SOURCE:
http://www.nomealaska.org/vc/history.htm