Map Shows the Hardest to Pronounce Town Name in Every U.S. State

Recently, Mental Floss broke down the state names that Americans find the hardest to pronounce, based on a study by language learning website Preply. As part of that analysis, the researchers also compiled a state-by-state list of the individual town names across the United States—one each for Alabama to Wyoming—that Americans apparently find the trickiest to pronounce.

Based on data compiled from a number of sources and desk research, the team over at Preply assembled a list of 50 town and place names that cover all aspects of linguistic difficulty. 

1. Hardest to Pronounce Town Names, Mapped
2. The Hardest to Pronounce Town Name in Every State—And How to Say It

Hardest to Pronounce Town Names, Mapped

Some of the entries they’ve picked out, for instance, are made difficult due to their length—Alaska’s Nunathloogagamiutbingoi Dunes is a prime example. Where the tongue-twisting name derives from, or what it’s intended to mean, is supposedly unknown, other than that its roots lie in a local native Alaskan language.

In fact, several of the names chosen in the study derive from native languages that have far more complex and nuanced place names than English, among them Alabama’s Loachapoka (which means “turtle sitting place” in Muskogee), Wayzata in Minnesota (derived from a Sioux word for “north”), and Louisiana’s Natchitoches (which is a local Caddo tribal name).

Elsewhere, if you think the butte in Colorado’s Crested Butte should rhyme with “cut,” you’re wrong—butte in fact rhymes with “cute.” It came into English via French. 

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Some of the other names highlighted in the study might not appear quite so complex at first glance, but have picked up such idiosyncratic pronunciations locally that their spellings are somewhat counterintuitive.

Cairo, Nebraska, for instance, is not pronounced like its namesake Egyptian capital, but more like Karo corn syrup. Milan in New Hampshire isn’t pronounced the same way as Milan, Italy, but with the stress on the first syllable, “MY-linn.” Palermo, North Dakota, similarly shifts its stress onto the first syllable to make “PAL-er-mo,” not Sicily’s “Pal-ER-mo.” Berlin, Connecticut, is pronounced “BURR-lin,” not “ber-LIN” (and so rhymes with Merlin). 

Local idiosyncrasies are also to blame in the confusing pronunciation of Indiana’s most troublesome place name, Loogootee. Some believe it originated with a local corruption of the French name Le Gaultier, while others think it’s a blending together of early town founders Thomas Lowe and Thomas Nesbe Gootee. Wherever it came from, despite its spelling the name is pronounced “luh-GO-tee,” not “loo-goo-tee.”

On the subject of locally concocted names like that one, meanwhile, Kansas’s trickiest place name, Osawatomie, was coined by blending together of the names of two local tribes, the Osage and the Pottawatomie; the resulting merged name is apparently pronounced “oh-so-WAH-tah-mee.”

Perhaps the name with the strangest origin story, however—and one of the strangest and most surprising pronunciations—is Zzyzx, California. Located in the middle of the Mojave Desert, this now long-abandoned ghost town was founded by Alabama-born evangelist, preacher, and self-proclaimed physician Curtis Howe Springer in 1944; Springer invented the name himself, wanting it to be “the last word in health.” Springer established his own health spa in the town and sold his own bottled water from the local springs—but Zzyzx was built on federal land and eventually reclaimed by the government in 1974. Ultimately, the town—who name is pronounced “ZY-ziks”—was abandoned.

The Hardest to Pronounce Town Name in Every State—And How to Say It

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