Magic in a name

A young woman from Kathmandu was a guest in our home last summer.

My in-laws lived for a time in Kuala Lumpur.

In 2005 I stayed two nights in a Killarney hotel.

Each of those statements is true, and each is unremarkable but for the cities mentioned, which for some of us have a bit of magic in their names. Thanks to movies (think Casablanca), literature (think The Snows of Kilimanjaro), songs (think It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary) and travel articles and brochures (think Honolulu and Cozumel), certain place names just sound more exotic, more romantic, more adventuresome than others.

It also helps to have three or more syllables. If you had your choice of going to either Tampa or Tallahassee and knew absolutely nothing about either city, you would probably choose Tallahassee just because it sounds like more fun. You might also choose Chattanooga before Nashville. Paris, among the most magical of all cities, is often called Gay Paree perhaps to give it that third syllable.

Here are some other places in the world that sound a bit exotic: Timbuktu, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Tripoli, Algiers, Kyoto, Bangalore, Singapore, Rangoon, Mandalay, Samoa, Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, Valencia, Marseille, Palermo, Lincolnshire, Wells-next-the-Sea, Mexicali, Guadalajara, Alcapulco. You can probably think of others.

My friend from Nepal doesn't seem to find anything magical in the word Kathmandu. It's just her home town. So the romance to be found in a place name may also depend upon how far away it is. I'm from Ohio, so Cuyahoga Falls don't sound that exciting to me, but if you live in Italy or Japan you may think differently. Most of the U.S. towns that sound a bit exotic to me are relatively far away, such as Albuquerque, Pasadena, Santa Rosa and Petaluma.

A little stone house in Charlevoix, Mich., built by Earl Young.

An exception for me are certain towns in Michigan. During my childhood one set of grandparents lived briefly in Houghton Lake and I would hear them mention towns in the northern part of the state that somehow sounded alluring to me. Also, as a teenager I listened to a Detroit radio station that frequently mentioned towns from around the state. And so even today the sound of places like Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Bad Axe set off a smidgen of excitement in me.

I have vacationed twice in Charlevoix in the past five years, and partly because of the many stone  "Hobbit houses" designed by Earl Young in that community, I can attest that sometimes places actually live up to the magic promised by their names.