{"id":10500,"date":"2012-03-29T17:26:29","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T22:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=10500"},"modified":"2022-03-19T06:02:52","modified_gmt":"2022-03-19T11:02:52","slug":"heterogram-place-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/heterogram-place-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Heterogram Place Names"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s not only geography that makes a place unique. It can also be an unusual array of letters forming its name, for example what I featured awhile ago on Place Name Palindromes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I traveled down a several-hours tangent recently in search of heterogram place names. Those are words where each letter of the alphabet appears only once. “Utah” would demonstrate that principle. U, T, A and H are all used a single time without any repetition. However, I’d call that a particularly lame occurrence — just four letters — used simply for illustrative purposes. Go ahead and start thinking of longer ones while I set the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mountain<\/a>
Naturally I have been to U-T-A-H<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Let’s begin with some definitions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A pangram<\/em> is a sentence or phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet. Repeats are allowable but fewer repetitions are more impressive. Many people learning to type start with a pangram: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” A perfect pangram uses all 26 letters only once. Perfect pangrams in English don’t even look like English<\/a>. “Cwm fjord veg balks nth pyx quiz” is an example. There may be pangram place names if one considers ridiculous layers of government: Francis Quarles Story Neighborhood Historic District<\/a>, City of Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona, United States of America picks up some of the more difficult letters but even that one doesn’t get all 26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An isogram<\/em> doesn’t have to use every letter, but the letters it does use have to occur the same number of times. The word “noon” serves as a very simple example. Here, the N and O each appear twice. Some would call that a second-order isogram. A heterogram<\/em> is a first-order isogram. Each letter appears only once. If a single word with twenty-six different letters existed in some alternate universe, it would be the longest possible heterogram and first-order isogram. It would also be a perfect pangram. Got all that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Search Begins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n