This Town Name Isn’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

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 there are some names of towns that I always have trouble spelling.

Tallahassee, for example.

Yes, that was the one that came to mind immediately.

How many S’s are in that word?

Yeah, how many S’s, how many L’s?

Do they have a rhyme or a mnemonic to help out?

Right.

I hope our Tallahassee listeners can help us with that,

Because I always have to go look up how to spell Tallahassee.

I’m sure there’s a trick, but I don’t know it.

But, you know, there are some town names that are really easy to spell.

Some of them just have one letter.

One letter.

One letter.

For example, the town of E.

It’s a little town in northern France,

And it just has two main streets which come together to form the shape of the letter Y,

And they just call that town E.

And then there’s another town in Norway,

In northern Norway.

And it’s just the letter A with one of those little circles on top.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m told it’s pronounced like the O in born.

So.

Born.

Born.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, so far our trip is going to be it, it, oh.

Right.

We’re going to sound like donkeys.

People are like, where are you going?

We’re going to get it, oh.

And then, you know, I guess we could go around the United States, too.

I mean, I don’t know that we have any one-letter towns, but we do have a couple of three-letter towns.

There’s Op in Alabama.

I used to know some.

Yes.

You know me?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

No, but I knew somebody from Op.

You did?

Yes.

From Op, Alabama, which is named for Henry Op, who was an attorney.

And then also in Alaska, there’s the town of Eek, E-E-K.

Oh, no.

They need to get a Pied Piper in there.

What?

A Pied Piper?

Mice.

Eek them out.

Eek them out.

Eek them out.

Yeah, they got to get a Pied Piper in there.

I thought maybe it had a cliff or a precipice or a really big…

Or maybe it’s from a native language.

What do we know?

Well, that is correct.

It’s from a Yupik word that means two eyes.

Eek.

That’s mysterious.

I know.

I like that.

I’m imagining a cliff that looks like a huge face that stares at you when you’re on the water.

With the two eyes.

Yeah.

But I’m wondering if we have listeners who live in or near another town like that.

Yeah.

What’s the town near you that’s got a really short name or, heck, an interesting or funny name?

We’d love to hear about it.

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