A palindrome is a word or phrase that is identical whether read forward or backward. Simple examples would include the words MOM and DAD. I love palindromes and wondered if I could combine this concept with some odd geography. I soon discovered that truly every esoteric subject has a home on Wikipedia when I found a list of palindromic place names. Seriously. Someone else not only pondered this exact topic but compiled a list. Suddenly I feel so unoriginal.
I guess I can consider it “fair use” if I steal borrow this idea assuming I add value. Right?
Adaven, Nevada
So I started with the list. Wikipedia claims the champion is Adaven, Nevada (map) at twelve characters, but they note it doesn’t really count because someone simply made it up by reversing the name of the state.
I’d say a better reason for striking it from the list is that it’s a ghost town. A small community formed in the 1870’s and the population remained at about twenty-five inhabitants for the next fifty years. It only got a name when the government opened a post office and they had to call it something. There’s not much left of Adaven today other than ruins. The post office left decades ago.
Aksarben, Nebraska
Adaven, Nevada? Please, what a joke. If we’re dealing with made up names that don’t count anyway we might as well throw Aksarben, Nebraska onto the ring. That’s right, sixteen characters blowing Adaven right out of the water. I wonder why Wikipedia didn’t include it on the list? I suppose I could edit the Wikipedia page, but, well… that would require effort, and um… I guess it just feels better to gripe about its inadequacies than actually fix it.
I used to spend a lot of time in Nebraska. It’s not a particularly interesting story so let’s skip that for now. From my time there though, I remember that Omaha had a well-known horse racing track and arena called Aksarben. They simply spelled Nebraska backwards.
It was located right around in here.
They designed the whole thing to fund the charitable activities of a civic group called the Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben. More than 13,000 bettors flocked to the Aksarben track daily at its height in mid-1980’s. Yet it completely shut down barely a decade later, overtaken by other forms of gambling such as the nearby riverboat casinos on the Iowa side of the border. The track closed for good in 1995 although the arena held on until 2002. Finally they bulldozed the whole place in 2005.
I learned all this from the AK-SAR-BEN Horse Racing History website. So, I guess it’s been awhile since I’ve been to Omaha. I thought the place was still there until I began researching this article.
With another failed attempt now behind me, I returned to the list.
Wassamassaw
Great word. This eleven character palindrome rolls off the tongue nicely. Wassamassaw is located in southeastern South Carolina. There’s not much information on this one either although I found an interesting entry on wordie.org — which describes itself as “Like Flickr, but without the photos” — which I found rather amusing. And Twelve Mile Circle is like Google Maps without the visitors. Love it! Anyway [the website no longer exists but…], they say that Wassamassaw is,
“The name of a swamp in South Carolina, north of Charleston (the northern extension of the Cypress Swamp). Legend has it that the Indian meaning of the palindrome is “the worst place ever seen”.”
Sounds pleasant. It’s just a stone’s throw from, um, Black Tom Road. OK, let’s move right along from that little vestige of the Old South…
And Others
I’m starting to feel that perhaps this Wikipedia page has lower standards and expectations than many of the others. Next up comes Anahanahana in Madagascar, also with eleven digits. I found nothing. I think someone made it up. They follow this with Zirak Kariz in Afghanistan and Saxet, Texas, both with ten characters. They exist but neither of them amounts to much. Then it trails off with fewer characters until we reach Å, in Norway. That’s a wonderful name for a town but the lamest of all palindromes imaginable. I’d be embarrassed to add Å to the tally. Have they no shame?
What may not be readily apparent is that I truly enjoyed this list. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. It gave me two hours of solid entertainment. Just don’t take its claims too seriously.
Leave a Reply