So I was looking up some place name that starts with ka- and ends with -an which seems to be very common, and that reminded me of this old post, where I proposed the origin of Hemei 和美 was Kalisian.
I decided to see if I could find an entry of ka-lisi-an and figure out what it means. Turns out, I was wrong, instead of ka- + -an, the origin instead was qali- + -an. The qali- initial is reserved for things that are holy, or connected to the spiritual world. The examples are rainbow *qali-waRwaR, butterfly *qali-baŋbaŋ, and whirlwind *qali-puspus. This “prefix for words with a sensitive reference to the spirit world” often evolves into kali- or ali-.
For our case, qalís means “to change place or activity”
https://www.trussel2.com/ACD/acd-s_q.htm?fbclid=IwAR0-Z7i04Ibb1xsi3sb9Km9vUJNqjl6_DBEaorTrY2cd0rZGTWoA9Cs27Do#32666
This seems to match the “the boundary between hot and cold” explanation given for Hemei.
Since this word was probably the etymology for 傀儡山 (ka-lé-san, present day Jiayi 嘉義, as well as Alishan 阿里山), 佳里興 (Kalisin, present day Tainan Jiali), and 卡里善 (khah-lí-siān, present day Changhua Hemei), they seems to share something in common.
Since the Tropics of Cancer passes right through Jiayi, naming it Kalisian (places where it changes from hot to cold) seems to make perfect sense.
Also, now I think about it, when the Qing government renamed 傀儡 (ka-lé) to 嘉義 (ka-gī), it wasn’t that big of a change for speakers of Taigi.