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A palindromic place is a city or town whose name can be read the same forwards or backwards. An example of this would be Navan in Ireland. Some of the entries on this list are only palindromic if the next administrative division they are a part of is also included in the name, such as Adaven, Nevada.

Issues

Because the names here come from a variety of languages, several issues arise.

Unbalanced diacritics

Diacritics are marks placed on or near letters to give them a modified pronunciation. Some languages treat such as completely different letters; others treat them as variants of the base letter. The latter group is summarized here. Only place names where the language of the country is in the latter group are included here when diacritics make for an apparent non-palindrome.

Turkic vowels

Some Turkic languages (Turkish, Azerbaijan, Kazakh) have two or more vowels that resemble the I. They are differentiated by the number of dots above the letter: zero, one, or two. These dots appear on both lower and upper case letters. For places in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, only those vowels that have the same number of dots will be considered equal here.

ʻOkina in Polynesian languages

The ʻokina is a consonant found in several Polynesian languages. It is pronounced as a glottal stop and is often represented by an apostrophe when the correct character ʻ is not available. Because English wordplay generally ignores apostrophes, it is common to ignore ʻokinas in deciding whether a Polynesian name is a palindrome. However, this list does not follow that rule. Unbalanced ʻokinas will not be found in this list. However that rule has not been applied consistently to the Arabic hamza, which also represents a glottal stop.

Palindromic place names

Palindromatic place names in the Latin alphabet are:

12 letters

11 letters

10 letters

9 letters

8 letters

7 letters

6 letters

5 letters

4 letters

3 letters

2 letters

1 letter

(Arguably not a palindrome, or perhaps a degenerate palindrome)

Palindromes that include abbreviations

Some place names make a palindrome when they include the abbreviation of the state or province they are in.

8 letters

7 letters

6 letters

5 letters

See also

Sources

  1. ^ "Forwards & Backwards – Life of Brian".
  2. ^ Taylor, D. R. "Saxet, TX". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  3. ^ "Ellemelle, Belgium". Geographical Names. ITA (International Trade Association?). Retrieved 17 April 2021.
  4. ^ "Oktahatko". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  5. ^ "Uburubu". geoview.info. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  6. ^ "Reber, NY". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  7. ^ "Linn IL". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  8. ^ "Lis IL". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
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