'Sister-cities' in different cultures - 'brothers' or 'sisters'?

The article deals with semantic and cognitive analysis of the concept of sister-cities in Russian, British and American cultures. The analysis of Russiqn and English definitions are as follows: 1) lexical and grammatical analysis of the lexis; 2) semantic analysis of sets of meanings, including etymology; 3) semantic and cognitive analysis where meanings are related to the frame structures. The results show that the difference between sister-city and gorod-pobratim/brother-city are in territory/size division, interpersonal and official relationships and formality/informality of communication.