I need many examples of American city names consisting of the same word
twice. Like "Paw Paw," in Michigan. Is there an existing compilation?

Hello infovoyeur,

So far as I can tell, there are three towns in the United States with
one word, a space, and then another word:

Paw Paw, MI
Ty Ty, GA
Walla Walla, WA

Pago Pago, as noted by Pinkfreud, is in American Samoa, which is a
United States territory.  So perhaps that counts as well.

There are also several towns in the United States with two identical
syllables (with no spaces in between).

Bobo, AL
Bobo, MS
HooHoo, WV
Soso, MS
Tumtum, WA

Of those towns, HooHoo is the most similar to your example of "Paw
Paw", since the two syllables are capitalized.  (From my searches on
Google, it seems that the second syllables for the other towns are
lowercase.)

"Place Names in West Virginia - H"
West Virginia Division of Culture and History
http://www.wvculture.org/history/placnamh.html

The entire list, except for Pago Pago, is contained within the following page:

"Interesting U.S. Town Names"
Cool Quiz!
http://www.coolcaption.com/trivia/usa/towns.asp

- justaskscott


Search terms used on Google and Ixquick, in various combinations:

"paw paw"
"walla walla"
"ty ty"
"pago pago"
bobo
hooho
soso
tumtum

[I searched for state names and intials in association with those
place names, and looked on Mapquest to view maps for most of those
places.]

I don't know of any exisiting compilation, but "Walla Walla,
Washington" immediately came to mind.  Perhaps someone else will know
a few more.

--Missy

I don't think you will be able to obtain a list with "many examples,"
since I doubt that there are any other American city names like this,
other than Paw Paw and Walla Walla. This list of place names might be
of some interest to you:

"Place names with this property include: AKA AKA (rural district near
Auckland, New Zealand), BADEN-BADEN (in Germany), BELLA BELLA (coastal
town in British Columbia, Canada), BORA BORA (an island in French
Polynesia), BUBUBUBU (a stream in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo), BUDGE BUDGE (a suburb of Calcutta), DUM DUM (another suburb of
Calcutta), FOFO FOFO (a town in Papua), GOONOO GOONOO (Australia),
GRONG GRONG (a town in Australia), KIRAKIRA (Solomon Islands), KURRI
KURRI (Australia), LOMALOMA (Fiji), MITTA MITTA(Australia), NENGONENGO
(Fr. Polynesia), NGORO NGORO (a crater in Tanzania), PAGO PAGO (Am.
Samoa), PAOPAO (Fr. Polynesia), PUAPUA (W. Samoa), PUEPUE (Solomon
Islands), PUKAPUKA (Cook Islands), RABA RABA (Papua New Guinea),
REKAREKA (Fr. Polynesia), SAVUSAVU (Fiji), SOMOSOMO (Fiji), WALLA
WALLA (U. S.), WALLAN WALLAN (Australia), WAGGA WAGGA (Australia), and
WOY WOY (Australia)."

http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words2.html

how about WOY WOY in New South Wales, Australia. Made famous by the
comedian Spike Milligan, of "The Goon Show" fame. He lived there until
sadly passing away recently. Also the little town of GIN GIN, in
Western Australia. Nothing happens there. But we love it.

I don't know why, but I love questions like these.  Here's a few names
that come close, but don't quite amount to the same word twice:

Hohokus, NJ
Eight Eight, Ky
Zig Zag, OK
Forty Fort, PA
Ding Dong, Tx

Ooops...that's Eighty Eight, Ky