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What Are The Most Common Mispronunciations Of Places In Wyoming?

Zack Godfrey Flickr Creative Commons

It's all happened to us one time or another. Mispronouncing words. Now...how about trying to correctly say a city, county, or landmark in the Equality state?

We asked listeners to help make a list of commonly mispronounced Wyoming places. Below are the results! If you have a favorite word you think should be listed, tell us in the comments below and use the hashtag #wyowords on Twitter.

Gros Ventre (Grow-vont) Gros Ventre River, Mountains, and Wilderness. Visitors to Wyoming often pronounce the name as (Gross-vent-ree).

Teton (Tee-tän) is not pronounced (Tee-tun). The Grand Teton National Park is a National Park in northwestern Wyoming. With approximately 310,000 acres, the park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile-long Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of Jackson Hole.

Vedauwoo (Vee-da-VOO) not (Vee-da-WOO) is an area of rocky outcrops located in south-eastern Wyoming, north of Interstate 80, between Laramie and Cheyenne. Its name, according to some, comes from the Arapaho word "bito'o'wu" meaning "earth-born".

Absaroka Range (Ab-SOR-kuh) not (Ab-suh-ROKE-uh) crosses the Montana-Wyoming border, forming the eastern boundary of Yellowstone National Park and the western side of the Bighorn Basin. The range borders the Beartooth Mountains to the north and the Wind River Range to the south.

Shoshone (Shuh-sho-nee) or Shoshoni a Native American tribe with three large divisions. They traditionally speak the Shoshoni language, part of the Numic languages branch of the large Uto-Aztecan language family. It is also the name of the a town in Wyoming, and the first federally protected National Forest in the U.S., which covers nearly 2,500,000 acres in the state.

Butte (Byoot) not (Butt) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller than mesas, plateaus, and table landforms. Found in Wyoming as the Fossil Butte National Monument and Red Butte, a census-designated place in Natrona County.

Dubois is commonly mispronounced with the correct French (Dewb-wah), but in Wyoming it's pronounced it (DEW-boyz). Dubois is a town in Fremont County, Wyoming.

Togwotee (TOGA-tee) not (Tog-waa-tee) is a mountain pass located on the continental divide in the Absaroka Mountains, between the towns of Dubois and Moran Junction.

Popo Agie Wildernes (Puh-POE-zha), a true word stumper that is not pronounced as it looks, meaning "beginning of the waters". The Wilderness runs through the Shoshone National Forest, which stretches out over 102,000 acres of rugged topography in the Wind River Range.

Washakie (WAH-shu-key) not (Wah-SHAA-key) a county in Wyoming named after Chief Washakie (1804–1900), a leader of Shoshone Native American tribe.

Anna Rader is the digital producer for multiple podcasts at Wyoming Public Media: the station’s award-winning flagship podcast HumaNature, PRX's Project Catapult podcast The Modern West, and Carbon Valley. She helps shape what you see on this website, along with social media outreach and branding. She is also involved with production, hosting, and programming in various areas at the station.
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