A view of the White Mountains the top of Mt. Monroe in New Hampshire. Brian Yurasits/Unsplash
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If you ever stumble over the pronunciation of a New Hampshire town name, you’re not alone. According to Mental Floss, the trickiest town to pronounce in the state is Milan, in Coös County. It’s pronounced MY-linn—not like the Italian city.
The list comes from a study by language-learning site Preply, which identified the hardest towns to pronounce in each state. You can check out a map of all 50 states’ most challenging town names here.
Some of these names come from Native languages, others from French origins, and some are the result of early settlers blending two names together. Some are named after people, as is the case of Milan.
The town, with a population now of about 1,400 was originally called Paulsbourg in 1771, named for Paul Wentworth, a cousin of Gov. John Wentworth, according to this New Hampshire state website. In 1824, Gov. Levi Woodbury renamed it Milan after businessman Milan Harris, who established some of America’s first woolen mills in Harrisville. Harrisville, in Cheshire County, also happens to be named after Harris.
A few more town name highlights from around New England:
- Vermont: Montpelier – mont-PEEL-yər
- Massachusetts: Worcester – WOO-ster
- Maine: Seboeis – Seh-BOW-iss
- Connecticut: Berlin – BURR-lin
And the hardest of all? It could be Alaska’s Nunathloogagamiutbingoi Dunes. Even Mental Floss admits nobody really knows how to say it, but a rough approximation might be: Noo-nath-loo-ga-ga-mee-oot-bin-go-ee.
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