Dull, Scotland, bonds with Boring, Ore.

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DULL, Scotland, April 26 (UPI) -- Dull, a hamlet in Scotland's Perthshire, may be thousands of miles from Boring, Ore., but residents say their names constitute a bond between the two towns.

The two communities have proclaimed their sisterhood, The Daily Telegraph reported. The relationship will have to be unofficial, the newspaper said, because Dull, which has lost population and no longer supports a church or school, is considered too small to have an official relationship with Boring, an unincorporated place about 20 miles southeast of Portland with a population of about 12,000.

Dull learned of its trans-Atlantic soulmate when a Dull resident bicycled through Boring during a vacation in the United States. Elizabeth Leighton came home and told a friend, who got in touch with Steve Bates, chairman of the Boring planning association.

Neither name is a comment on its town. Dull is believed to derive from a Gaelic word for either meadow or snare, while Boring was named after one of its first residents, William Boring, a Civil War veteran who died in 1932 at the age of 91.

Peter Campbell of Dull Farm said he hopes the publicity will bring more visitors to stay in the two chalets he rents out.

"Dull is a fairly quiet place, more a hamlet than anything. Whether it could be described as being 'dull' is debatable," he said. "There are no shops or anything like that, but it's an historic place -- St Andrews University was founded here centuries ago."