LANSING (WKZO-AM) — Michigan has a long and rich history, and has been under the control of Native Americans, the Spanish, and the French before becoming part of the United States. It’s left Michigan with a lot of places with strange names like Ishpeming and Ypsilanti.
Exotic places like Kalamazoo or Saugatuck.
St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie are holdovers from French occupation just as Seville, and Isabella County may have been named when Spaniards ruled the roost.
By far the largest number of the names that get butchered are names that are the English versions of Native American words
The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs has come up with a pronunciation guide that may prove useful in ways that have not been discovered yet. It’s called “You Say it How in Michigan?”
Bill Robinson, Director of the Bureau of Services for Blind Persons says they took on this daunting project because they have a lot of people who read for the blind, and they can really hammer some of the local names.
The list of 22-hundred names includes more than just places. It also includes athletes like Derek Jeter, politicians like Fred Upton and other Michigan celebrities who will often show up in the reading material, but may have their names misread.
Robinson says it might be useful to have a link to the Pure Michigan website so that tourists can check their pronunciation before the try to reserve a motel room or book a flight.
They say with some of them they just took their best guess, so it’s a work in progress.It can be fun to scroll down the list and discover how many of the names you have been butchering all your life and not knowing it.
