After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New York, along with Zap, North Dakota, and Man, West Virginia. Shorter still is the name of Ai, Ohio, with a population of just over 600. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ai, Ohio! Man, West Virginia! Are Not Exclamations But Places”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
And Grant, you remember that conversation we had not too long ago about towns and cities that have very, very short names, like even one or two letters.
Right. There was the town in France.
It was just the letter Y, or called Y in French.
Just Y.
Right. And the reason was that there were roads that intersected in a Y.
And what’s really interesting about that is that several of our listeners wrote to tell us that there is a Y, Arizona, that is named for the same reason.
It has two major highways, State Routes 85 and 86, that originally intersected in a Y.
And they weren’t allowed to just use one letter, so they called the town Y-W-H-Y.
Y-Arizona, because it has beautiful landscapes.
That’s why.
That’s right.
And a dry heat.
We heard from lots of other listeners who told us about towns like Ely, Iowa, and Ely, Minnesota, and Ely, Nevada, and also Rye, New York.
We didn’t think of that one, Grant.
Oh, of course.
That makes perfect sense.
Right.
And Zap, North Dakota, which I hadn’t heard of.
Man, West Virginia. But Grant, there’s one place that beats all of them, and it’s called iOhio, and that’s spelled AI. It has about 600 people there, and it’s iOhio.
Oh, they are so well positioned with this big AI boom. They should have data centers.
They should be logoed. They should be really profiting with what’s happening in the tech world right now.
Yeah, yeah. They’ve got a sign up already that says, hi. Hi. I love it. That’s great.
Well, Martha and I love talking about language, including names, whether it’s your name or your pet’s names or your car names.
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