Is This the Most Difficult Town Name to Pronounce in Michigan?

Having lived in Michigan for just over a year, I've learned that no town name in Michigan is quite as easy to say as it looks with the few obvious exceptions of common names or nationally recognized cities.

Still, having grown up in Alabama, attending high school in a city called Bay Minette, passing through towns like Eufaula, Uriah (no, you aren't reading that right), Arab (not that one either), and Opelika and many more, I thought I had a leg up on properly pronouncing difficult names. And I was wrong.

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Naturally, I said Ypsilanti, Mackinac and Dowagiac wrong the first time around. I never even bothered to ask how to say Sault Ste. Marie until I happened to hear it one day and, yeah, with what I was reading in my head, I was way off.

Knowing that many more names are so difficult to pronounce in this state, it's certainly not an easy task to determine which name is the hardest to pronounce. 24/7 Wall St. made the effort to pick one town or city name in each state, and Michigan's is far from easy.

Ponshewaing, Michigan, which has a population of just 30 people, was determined by 24/7 Wall St. to be the most difficult town name to pronounce in all of Michigan. Ponshewaing is pronounced (PON-she-wang).

Ponshewaing is located on Highway 31 on the bank of Crooked Lake between Oden and Alanson in the north portion of the Lower Peninsula just northwest of Petoskey. The town name means “Peaceful Waters” or “Winter Home”, depending on who you ask.

Still, is Ponshewaing the hardest to pronounce? I feel I would have been pretty close on my first guess for this one. There are some doozies in this state after all. So, below is a list of some of the most difficult-to-pronounce names in Michigan, with a pronunciation guide to boot.

Which city or town name do you think is the hardest to say?