What’s in a Colorado name?
A lot. But how you
say it often comes
down to one thing:
the locals.
By Dameon Merkl
Special to The Denver Post
You say tēhōn, I say tāhōn.
In a diversely populated
state where place names stem
from English, Spanish, French
and American Indian origins,
it’s hardly surprising that cer­
tain geographical pronuncia­
tions vary as much as the lan­
guages from which they
sprang.
But which pronunciations
are correct?
According to the University
of Colorado’s Department of
Linguistics chair, professor
Andrew Cowell, there are two
answers to that question.
“If you’re an academic pur­
ist, you might want to say that
the pronunciation in the origi­
nal language is correct. But in
reality, I think most people
realize that if you move to a
new state or a new city, and
you start saying something the
wrong way, people start look­
ing at you funny, and you eventually say it
the way everybody else says it, right?”
Take Louisville, for example.
“In Colorado, we say ‘lū ĭs vĭl’ for that
town near Boulder,” says Cowell. “But if you
go to Kentucky, they say ‘lū ē vĭl.’ If you try
to say ‘lū ĭs vĭl’ in ‘lū ē vĭl,’ you’re going to
get corrected every single time. So I think
the existing local usage is really what has to
be considered the correct pronunciation.”
Sometimes, the way names are spoken
has more to do with interpretation than
regional dialect.
“Niwot (nī wŏt), for example,” explains
Cowell, “is named after an Arapaho chief.
As the residents of Niwot began making
connections with the Arapaho tribe, the
first thing the Arapaho told them was that
the actual word is ‘Nowooth’ [nō wŏth,
meaning “left hand” or “on the left”]. They
had really garbled the word.”
“I doubt anyone will change the town
name, but now the local white folks can tell
you, ‘we say ‘nī wŏt,’ but the original Arapa­
ho name is ‘nō wŏth,’ ” says Cowell.
Like all language, pronunciation is a fluid,
evolving enterprise. Sometimes words
Santa Fe. We have the Cache la
Poudre (kash lə pū dər, com­
monly referred to as the Pou­
dre), named for where they hid
their gun powder in Fort Col­
lins, the Platte and the Purga­
toire,” explains Noel.
French pronunciations can
be tricky, but the most trouble­
some word for Noel is slightly
less exotic: Arvada (är vŏd ə).
“I never get it right,” says
Noel with a chuckel. “I always
mispronounce it ‘är văd ə’. I’ve
been corrected out there at the
Arvada Cultural Center. The
locals make a big deal out of it.”
“But I think it’s the Ute
names that give people the
most trouble, like Weminuche
(wĕm ĭ nū chē), Cochetopa
(kō chĭ tō pə), Saguache (sə
wäch). I always thought that
was the Ute’s revenge, putting
names on the land that embar­
rass people because they can’t
pronounce them. It’s not pho­
netic,” Noel says.
But if the spellings of places
like Saguache don’t seem to
match their pronunciations,
that is no fault of the Utes,
according to Alden Naranjo,
spokesman for the Southern
Ute Indian Tribe’s Cultural
Danielle Kees, The Denver Post
Preservation Department.
“The Utes don’t have an al­
phabet. The way the immigrants heard it,
the way you hear it, is how they spelled it,”
shorten naturally over time, until the new
says Naranjo. “The the word is ‘sə wŭp;’ it
version just sticks, and other times changes
means ‘sand dunes.’ But the immigrants
result from the process of folk etymology,
couldn’t pronounce it, so they called it ‘sə
when an unfamiliar word is replaced with a
wäch.’ ”
familiar one.
Also, according to Naranjo, the town
Such was the case of today’s Purgatoire
name of Ignacio (ig näsh ē ō) — consistent­
(pûr g twär) River, in southeast Colorado.
ly credited for having been named after the
Originally under the Spanish moniker “Rio
Ute Chief Ignacio — does not have a singu­
de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio,”
lar Ute connection.
meaning “River of the Lost Souls in Purga­
“It’s a Spanish name. The patron saint
tory,” French trappers gave the name its
here is Ignatius. It’s a white man’s spelling
first translation.
and pronunciation,” Naranjo says. “There
“They called it the Purgatoire, which is
was a Ute chief named Ignacio, but the
just ‘purgatory,’ ” says Cowell. “But once
town’s name is Spanish for Saint Ignatius.”
settlers came in, most of them didn’t know
The Town Office of the city of Ignacio
French, and they decided someone must
reports hearing both versions of the name’s
have been trying to say ‘picket wire.’ So, for
origin, but cannot confirm whether it is
a while, it was the Picket Wire River.”
dubbed for Chief Ignacio or Saint Ignatius.
Author, professor and tour guide Tom
Unwilling to play a game of chicken or
Noel, commonly known as “Dr. Colorado,” is
egg, Christine Robinette, director of the
familiar with the French impact on Colorado
Ignacio Community Library, suggests that
nomenclature.
the official origin of the city’s name is in
“It’s important to point out that the
fact both versions.
French were here before the Gold Rush.
“Our area is (composed) of three very
They were trappers from French Canada, in
distinct streams,” says Robinnette. “The
the fur trade, looking for a route down to
Southern Ute tribe, the descendants of the
conquistadors, who have been here for over
400 years, and the newcomers, the Anglos,
all with great regard for each other. There is
a Saint Ignatius Church here, it goes way
back, it has a bell tower that goes back to
the late 1800s. But the town name has to be
a result of both the Utes and the Hispanics
together. It cannot be one or the other; it
has to be both.”
Another mountain town whose name has
sparked plenty of conversation and debate
is Buena Vista (byū nə vĭs tə).
“We get a whole bunch of phone calls
where I’ll answer the phone and someone
will immediately say ‘I won! I won! You owe
me $5!’ They listen to how I answer the
phone to settle a bet,” says Katherine Perry,
assistant director of the Buena Vista Cham­
ber of Commerce.
“Back in 1879, Alsina Dearheimer suggest­
ed the name at a committee meeting. Her
first husband was a language and music
professor, so she knew it meant beautiful
view, but she just wanted it with an Ameri­
canized pronunciation. It was never intend­
ed to insult anybody, she just wanted it to be
‘byū,’ as in ‘beautiful,’ ” says Perry, who is
also the city’s resident cemetery guide.
Occasionally, however, the pronunciation
has ruffled some feathers.
“I’ve had people come into the chamber,
and they get extremely upset,” Perry says.
“They say we are being disrespectful and
we should teach our children how to pro­
nounce the name of our town properly, to
which I say, ‘It’s our town.’ This is histori­
cally how it came down, and if we want to
say it that way, it’s our town. Don’t tell us
how to pronounce our town. This is our
story. It’s documented in the history of
Chaffee County.”
Cities, towns, rivers and peaks offer myri­
ad pronunciation challenges, but some mon­
iker mangling occurs daily, on a typical
morning commute.
Phil Goodstein, currently working on his
latest tome, tentatively titled “The Denver
Index,” has written several books about
Mile High history, including “Denver
Streets: Names, Numbers, Locations, and
Logic.”
“I try to steer clear of an orthodoxy on
street pronunciations because there’s no
real concrete gazetteer of complete consen­
sus,” Goodstein says.
Through his research, Goodstein has
found several street­name anomalies.
“You have the Acoma (ä kə mə) Indians
of New Mexico but it’s ‘ə kō mə’ street in
Denver,” Goodstein says. “Galapago (găl ə
pā gō) Street is named for the Galapagos
(gə lä pə gəs) Islands. You have the Klama­
th (klă məth) Indians of the Pacific North­
west, and apparently folks misspelled the
word Klamath when they were putting the
street signs together, so that’s how you have
Kalamath (kă lə măth) Street.”
Goodstein also shares his thoughts on a
popular road in LoDo.
“He called himself ‘wīn kūp,’ ” Goodstein
says of the street’s namesake, Edward W.
Wynkoop, “which is probably the proper
Dutch pronunciation. Then his descendants
tended to call it ‘wĭn kūp.’
“But there was no real consensus and
nobody really cared until (Gov.) John Hick­
enlooper came on the scene. He didn’t want
people thinking about wine on his street
where he had the brew pub, so he insisted
on ‘wĭn kūp’ instead of ‘wīn kūp.’ ”
How to pronounce Colorado place names
Say “boot” and “book” out loud.
Those are two different “oo” sounds, right? Use this pronunciation guide to properly pronounce
names and titles found throughout Colorado, borrowed from the American Heritage Dictionary and
William Bright’s “Colorado Place Names.” — Dameon Merkl
[ă] as in cap, bad, act
[ā] cape, save, day
[ă] carrot
[â] care, fair
[ä] far, father, spa
[ĕ] set, red, left
[ē] eve, east, seed
[ə] the unaccented “a” of sofa,
appear, alone
[ĭ] it, bid,
[ī] ice, side, fine
[ŏ] cot, fond, collie (most
Americans pronounce this the
same as [ä] in father
[ō] oak, over, own
[ô] law, dawn, caught (many
Coloradans pronounce this the
same as the [ŏ] in cot and the
[ä] in father
[oi] boil, boy, coin
[ô ô] book, look, put
[ō ō] boot, soon, coop
[ou] out, loud, down
[ŭ] up, sun, love
[û] urge, bird, term
[ū] new, blue
     
Colorado: kŏl ə răd ō, although the pronunciations
“kŏl ə räd ō” and “kŏl ə räd ə” are still common enough to
mention. While residents were once referred to as
“Coloradoans,” the official term is now “Coloradans.”
Tejon: The street name is commonly “tā hōn” in Denver, and
“tē hōn” in Colorado Springs.
Piceance: pē ăns
Zuni: zūn ī Olathe: ō lā thə Cañon City: kăn yŭn sĭ tē; the tilde symbol is not always
included in all references, so the city is sometimes
mispronounced “kăn ən”
Huerfano: wâr fə nō