Frequently misspelled U.S. city names

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In 2001 Lycos 50 Daily Report compiled a list of the 12 most commonly misspellings of city names based on Lycos searches.

I have some problems with this list. For example, I’m sure a lot of searches for “Pittsburg” are for the towns in California, Kansas, etc., whose names really are spelled without the h. Sidney isn’t always a misspelling of Sydney. It can be the proper spelling of the given name, of the surname, and of several towns in North America.

I have way too much free time on my hands, so I made my own list based on Google hits for misspellings. I included the state postal abbreviation in the search to try to weed out the Pittsburgh/Pittsburg problem (searching for “Pittsburg PA” for example). I counted only misspellings that returned at least 1,000 hits. By this method Las Vegas doesn’t get any points because “Los Vegas NV” and “Las Vagas NV” return less than 1,000 hits each.

I tested only cities in the United States that I happened to think might be frequently misspelled. I have no way of testing every possible misspelling or every single town, so I’m sure the list is incomplete. The numbers in the following list refer to the number of Google hits for the misspelling(s) listed after the correct spelling.

65,200 Niagara Falls NY not Niagra Falls
43,500 Tucson AZ not Tuscon
43,500 Pittsburgh PA not Pittsburg
25,430 Los Angeles CA not Los Angelos (21,300) or Las Angeles (4,130)
20,840 Berkeley CA not Berkley (14,000) or Berkely (6,840)
20,000 San Francisco CA not San Fransisco
15,500 Bismarck ND not Bismark
13,400 Worcester MA not Worchester
12,200 Cincinnati OH not Cincinatti
7,910 Myrtle Beach SC not Mrytle
7,790 Phoenix AZ not Pheonix
7,740 Santa Ana CA not Santa Anna (but Santa Anna Texas is correct)
6,860 Paterson NJ not Patterson
4,510 Raleigh NC not Raliegh
3,990 San Diego CA not San Deigo
3,920 Chattanooga TN not Chatanooga
3,810 Bozeman MT not Boseman
3,440 Grand Prairie TX not Grand Prarie
3,440 Seattle WA not Seatle
3,310 Wichita KS not Witchita
3,200 Bellevue WA not Bellvue
2,840 Corpus Christi TX, not Corpus Cristi (1,800) or Corpus Christy (1,040)
2,380 Chesapeake VA not Chesapeak
2,060 Minneapolis MN not Mineapolis
1,590 Cleveland OH not Clevland
1,330 Independence MO not Independance
1,010 Des Moines IA not Des Moine
1,010 Milwaukee WI not Milwauke

There are some towns that were hard to test. There is an Englewood in California, but it’s much smaller than Inglewood. It’s hard to tell when Englewood CA refers to the small town, and when it’s a misspelling for Inglewood.

There are some cities that are misspelled a lot but not often enough to make the list, at least by the misspellings I tested: Erie PA, Albuquerque NM, Juneau AK, Tallahassee FL, etc.

Can anybody add to the list?

2

‘Niagra’ is an understandable phoenetic realisation. Likewise ‘Fransisco’. ‘Pheonix’ is no less logical to a non-English-fluent speaker than the correct spelling (remember, the internet has a lot of English-second-language participants…)

Two version of Vegas, so what? Any Brit says ‘Los’, not ‘Las’. So they’re prone to type it that way.

‘Mrytle’ - errrrr TYPO?!?!

‘Pittsburg’…sure, there’s not a single place anywhere in America that’s dropped the H from Burgh.

etc etc etc

3

For Canadian cities:

a whopping 41,200 for Ottowa; adding +ontario pares it down to 11,000

7730 for Vancover BC (should be Vancouver) (!)
5000 for Toranto ON (should be Toronto)
4700 for Winnepeg MB (should be Winnipeg)
4280 for Monkton NB (should be Moncton)
4110 for Iqualuit [Nunavut] (should be Iqaluit)
2760 for Fredrickton NB (should be Fredericton)
1290 for Edmondton AB (should be Edmonton)
1030 for Esquimault BC (should be Esquimalt)
788 for Vancuver BC
715 for Frederickton NB
448 for Charlottown PEI (should be Charlottetown)

4

Oh, and 103 hits for “Quebeck City”.

Jesus wept.

5

How interesting that Galveston, TX (expected misspelling: Gavelston) is not on the list

6

Chill out, guys. How many of you would have spelt ‘Loughborough’ right on the first attempt? And ‘Llanelli’? And … and…

7

None of your fancy Welsh spellings, my limey friend.

I, for one, always have trouble with Cincinnati. Very counter-intuitive, as it’s usually “t’s” that are doubled up, not “n’s.”

8

I wonder how much mail passes through the post office at Wilkes-Barre, PA that reads “Wilkesbury”?

Regarding “Mrytle”, I know lots of people, even those who collect the stuff, who cannot figure out how to spell “vinyl.” I see it most often as “vynil.”

9

My personal favorite, which I did not learn how to spell until I became a baseball fan: Philadelphia

Philidelphia 13,500
Philadalphia 1270
Filadelfia 11,100 - to be fair, this was all non-English sites

10

Actually, this caused a twenty-minute multiple-frown today, in case anybody still believes placenames don’t tend toward awkwardness:

What’s the difference between Hopton and Hopton?

[answer] One is now in Norfolk since the boundary changed, so you only need to worry about the other Hopton. And to help you, subsequent documents for the now-Norfolk Hopton refer to Hopton-on-Sea. Just not retrospectively. [/answer]

11

This is pretty insignificant compared to Tucson (which always looks wrong to me) but I actually sent mail, years ago, to a friend who was spending a few months in a place she called New Report, Mass.

I got the zip code right so the letter got there.

She called me – laughing-- to tell me I’d got it wrong, so she pronounced it better.

Oh. Newbry Port. Newbree Port?

Would you believe Newberry Port?

Newbury Port?

Newburyport?

Aieeeee! And I’m usually a pretty good speller.

12

I believe it’s legitimately spelt that way in Spanish.

13

Good point. It’s like complaining about 15 million hits for the idiotic spelling of ‘Rome’.

14

Actually, I would bet that the most common misspelling of Cleveland is Cleaveland, not Clevland. And that gets 51,300 hits, mostly people’s names, which makes sense when you consider that Cleveland (the city) was named after Moses Cleaveland and lost the “a” along the way somewhere.

15

Oops, forgot to include the OH, only 520 hits now. :smack:

Please ignore my previous post. :o

16

Similarly, there’s a Cleveland suburb named after the Olmstead family, but the city is North Olmsted. I know. I lived there for almost forty years. Yet North Olmstead (I didn’t include OH, since there’s no other North Olmsted in the USA) gets “about” 72,300 hits, while North Olmsted returns about 185,000. Similarly, Olmsted Falls yields 110,000, while the incorrect Olmstead Falls returns 38,100. Proportionally, Olmsted Township does best among the three adjacent communities – 42,500 hits to the 11,100 for Olmstead Township.

17

57,500 hits for “Detriot”. 8,560 for “Detriot, MI”.

18

I’m certainly not speaking as an authority, but I believe they ADDED the H in the early part of the 20th century. If you look at early newspaper box scores and old photographs there was no H, at least in the case of the Pirates.

19

315 hits right here at the Straight Dope for manhatten

:wink:

20

How many for banhattan? :smiley: