Small Change, Big Difference

It struck me that Cheyenne (the capital city of the U.S. state of Wyoming) and Cayenne (the capital city of the French overseas department of Guyane française) sounded remarkably similar in name. Yet, as locations go they couldn’t be more dissimilar even though only a couple of letters and a slight voice inflection separated them.


The Old West came to mind when I thought of Cheyenne

Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo 2014-8. Photo by enjoiskate8; (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo

Cheyenne’s name derived from Native Americans of Algonquian origin that migrated across the Great Plains in the 19th Century. Today they are located in Montana (Northern Cheyenne Nation) and Oklahoma (Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes).

The etymology wasn’t entirely clear. Many believed that the name came from a Dakota Sioux phrase for the Cheyenne that was adopted by incoming settlers of European descent. It also seemed like a fine name for a town when those same settlers began rolling into Wyoming in force and platted a village in 1867.

The city of Cheyenne grew and prospered enough to become the capital of Wyoming in 1890 at statehood. Nonetheless, Wyoming remained largely rural, with open countryside dotted by cattle ranches, cowboys and romantic notions along those lines.


Cayenne, on the other hand, evoked coastal South America

It absorbed a decidedly equatorial flavor like the fiery red hot pepper named for it.

Cayenne, Carnival 2013 (1). Photo by Andrea Privitera; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Carnival in Cayenne

Etymologically, Cayenne derived from Guyana, a name for the larger geographic region on the northeastern edge of the continent. In turn, Guyana likely came from an indigenous term for “land of many waters.” Interestingly both Cheyenne and Cayenne had their basis in indigenous New World languages. However, their similarity would have to be considered a coincidence. They came from completely different language families


The Game

So I turned it into a little game. I began a brief quest to see if I could discover any other geographic designations substantially similar in pattern or pronunciation while remarkably distinct in just about every other respect. I found another good one. How about Dallas, Texas and Dà Lat, Vietnam? Those two places would seem to exhibit tremendous differences.

Pioneer Park Cattle Drive. Photo by Mike Desisto; (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Obviously Texas

I returned to the cattle and cowboy theme for Dallas. Then maybe added a few oil wells, made the cattle a longhorn, threw in a dash of J.R. Ewing, and maybe some barbeque sauce along with a few more selected cultural stereotypes. Compare that with…

A very respectful and tranquil setting. Photo by Nick Postorino; (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Obviously NOT Texas

… Asian culture, Buddhist temples and rice paddies. Thus, Dà Lat was about as far away from Dallas in every manner imaginable except alphabetically so that should be a pretty high score. If I was keeping score.

So that’s how the game was played.


Some Other Examples

I spent more time than I’d care to admit trying to come up with other meaningful pairs. Some were vaguely clever. Others were completely absurd.

  • Giza vs. Pisa: Considerably different although they both featured iconic structures; pyramids in the first instance and a leaning tower in the latter.
  • New York vs. Newark: Residents of those respective locales would likely argue that they shouldn’t be confused. However their differences didn’t approach anything like North America vs. Asia.
  • Santiago vs. San Diego: Here my creativity began to wane. The two didn’t sound all that much alike.
  • Paris vs. Ferris: Well, that was definitely a stretch. Ferris was a town in Texas with 2,500 residents. I hardly considered that a household name so this one began to look like desperation on my part. It got worse.
  • Manila vs. Vanilla. Now I’m joking of course although there actually was a Vanilla in Pennsylvania according to GNIS (at 39.7781488°, -77.8505523°). I included this one only because I thought Manila folders were called Vanilla folders when I was a kid. In my defense those folders did seem to have the correct approximate color, kind of a milky tan/yellow like the ice cream. It took me years to figure out that I was butchering the name.

That was fun although I ran out of ideas. This is where the Twelve Mile Circle audience can get involved. Please feel free to be creative and suggest better alternatives. I wonder if there are any triple examples?


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18 responses to “Small Change, Big Difference”

  1. January First-of-May Avatar
    January First-of-May

    I don’t know enough about them to comment on their actual differences, but how about Frankfurt the large city in Germany (whichever one you choose) vs. Frankfort the tiny capital of Kentucky?

    Or maybe Samara (in Russia) vs. Samarra (as in “Appointment in Samarra” – in Iraq, apparently), and perhaps also vs. Samaria (the region where Samaritans came from, now part of self-proclaimed Palestine).

  2. John Deeth Avatar

    Sao Paulo and St. Paul?

  3. Craig Avatar
    Craig

    That being said, San Diego and Santiago are in fact doublets.

  4. David Overton Avatar
    David Overton

    Santiago and San Diego are both Spanish variants of Saint James. Does the shared etymology disqualify them from this game? 🙂

  5. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    Just that Santiago and San Diego both are Saint James (like you didn’t know that).

  6. Alice Avatar
    Alice

    This is so strange! A friend and I were discussing this exact same thing the other day, before I knew this post was coming – and then I log on and see this.

    The ones I was coming up with were in Britain. For example, Bradford – a large, industrial city of over 400,000 people and Broadford – a small crofting village on the Isle of Skye. Then there’s Liskeard, a picturesque Cornish tourist town and Liscard, a run-down suburb of the Wirral, on the opposite bank of the Mersey from Liverpool. And of course, the one that perenially perplexes American tourists who take the tube to Stratford, East London to see Shakespeare’s birthplace – which is actually over 100 miles away in Stratford-upon-Avon.

    It’s interesting that you mention New York and Newark. The city of licence for popular New York radio station Z-100 is actually Newark, and for years their legal ID at the top of the hour would pronounce WHTZ Newark in such an ambiguous way that you could never be sure whether they were saying New York or not…

  7. Ken Saldi Avatar
    Ken Saldi

    What about Tirana, the Capital of Albania and Tehran, the capital of Iran? They are pronounced the same except for an “a” sound at the end of Tirana.

  8. Rhodent Avatar
    Rhodent

    Here’s a couple I found:

    Beira vs. Beirut — The former is a city of a bit over half a million in Mozambique which was founded less than 200 years ago by Portuguese colonialists (the name comes from from a region of Portugal; I wasn’t able to find the origin of the Portuguese region’s name). The latter is a city in Lebanon with a metropolitan population of roughly two million which dates back over five millennia (the name comes from a Phoenecian word meaning “wells”).

    Turku vs. Turkey — The former is a city on the coast of Finland dating back to the Fourteenth Century (it is the oldest city in Finland) and it’s name comes from an Old Slavic word for marketplace. The latter is a country bordering Europe and Asia whose name comes from an ethnonym which dates roughly two and a half millennia and whose original meaning is lost to time.

  9. KCJeff Avatar
    KCJeff

    Glad to know I’m not the only one that called them vanilla folders. I think I was in junior high before I learned they were manila folders. Now I just wonder about the Philippines connection…

    1. Twelve Mile Circle Avatar

      Thank goodness for Wikipedia to answer life’s little mysteries.

      Manila folder: The manila component of the name comes from manila hemp or abacá, from which manila folders were originally made.

      Manila hemp: The name refers to the capital of the Philippines, one of the main producers of Manila hemp.

  10. Calgully Avatar
    Calgully

    One that’s oft fascinated me is the comparison between Walla Walla (Washington USA) with Walla Walla (NSW Australia).

    Both names are derived from native languages. In the USA the term apparently means “Place of many waters” and in Australia the name means “Place of many rocks”. I suspect both are very apt descriptions.

    USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walla_Walla,_Washington
    Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walla_Walla,_New_South_Wales

    It opens the whole question of double names. They are quite common in Australia where many indigenous languages use word repetition to indicate large quantity or size but I hadn’t been aware that this occurred in North American native languages as well.

  11. Philip Newton Avatar
    Philip Newton

    How about Boston, Lincolnshire (population about 35k for the actual town, about 65k for the entire borough) vs. Boston, Massachusetts (population and significance slightly greater)?

  12. Brent Avatar
    Brent

    Calgary, Alberta, Canada vs Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

  13. Ross Finlayson Avatar
    Ross Finlayson

    This reminds me of a question I’ve often wondered: Which place changes the most when you add “New” in front of the name? In other words: Which “New” place is the most unlike the place it was named after?

    My quess: New Britain (the island in Papua New Guinea). It’s hard to imagine a place more unlike ‘Old’ Britain.

  14. January First-of-May Avatar
    January First-of-May

    Inspired by the previous comment: Novosibirsk the city vs. Novosibirsky Islands (an uninhabited archipelago in north-eastern Siberia, perhaps better known under the translated name New Siberian Islands).

  15. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    And another: Sydney, Australia & Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada & Sidney, British Columbia, Canada. All three are quite different.

  16. ev Avatar
    ev

    Galicia’s not a city but refers to two regions either in Iberia or Central Europe.

    One that I discovered recently was Houma, Louisiana and Houma, Shanxi. Very different cities that coincidentally have the same name when transliterated to English

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