Pittsburgh, named by General John Forbes in honor of Sir William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham (15 November 1708 – 11 May 1778), has officially ended in an ‘h’ since its founding in 1758 with the exception of the time period from 1890-1911.
In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison formed a committee to “normalize” the spelling of towns formulated the following rules – and that reulted in things we see today -
a) The avoidance, so far as seems practicable, of the possessive form of names.
(b) The dropping of the final “h” in the termination “burgh.”
(c) The abbreviation of “borough” to “boro.”
(d) The spelling of the word “center” as here given.
(e) The discontinuance of the use of hyphens in connecting parts of names.
(f) The omission wherever practicable of the letters “C.H.” (Court House) after the names of county seats.
(g) The simplification of names consisting of more than one word by their combination into one word.
(h) The avoidance of the use of diacritic characters.
(i) The dropping of the words “city” and “town” as parts of names.
The proud citizens of Pittsburgh, considering their town an obvious historical exception to this ruling, refused to give in to the Board's ruling and mounted a campaign to keep the traditional spelling. Twenty years later, in 1911, the Board finally relented and restored the 'h' to Pittsburgh.
To this day people remain confused.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is not the only Pittsburg(h) in the nation. There's even a tiny town in North Dakota that spells it with the "h".
15 comments:
Good morning Iggy :) Isn't that the way it goes? Leftover confusion.
A while back, we had a tug of war over the "change of name" of one of our main thoroughfares. We have a row of streets named after Presidents -- Washington, Jackson, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Davis, McKinley, Van Buren, etc. and someone wanted to change Jefferson to another famous person's name, who was never President. Tug tug ... like mad!
Yeah, the messing about with names of places thing is annoying. Like the county I live in... The name got changed about 15 years ago (I think) and people still keep wanting to use the old name, and when you do the "find my address" thing on sites when you sign up, it usually lists our address with the old county name, so I have to manually change it. You'd think they'd be updated by now, but nope!
I never knew the detail of that history, I'm just glad we have the (h). It makes us special or at least that's how people here see it. Thanks as always for the education. I could use all the smarts I can get.
I don't see how those words would work the way they want it to, ha!! Think about those towns where their name includes "township". Are we supposed to call them ships instead?
And boro would not work for borough. Let's go to the boro? Does that still exist, I wonder?
Enlightening, as usual. I never knew it had been changed in the first place.
When I moved in here 6 years ago they supposedly changed the Street from S to SW, but they still haven't changed the street signs and I have never used SW. Who decides these things anyways--hehe!
Glad to see you posting. Have missed you! :)
We have a Pittsburg, MO. I guess they were conformists. We shouldn't be surprized at the things Governments is regulating these days considering they were messing with names of towns and cities all those years ago.
You come up with the most interesting stuff!
They are predicting 20 inches of snow here and BLIZZARD conditions for the first time ever in this area. It looks like they are right on both counts. Now I'm getting a taste of what you've been dealing with all winter! HUGE HUGS!
I'm glad you posted this one. I wanted to see what you came up with. :) Very interesting info...most of which I never knew.
We still use Boro around here. The renaming of roads and streets in our county to conform to the 9-1-1 readdressing is confusing to lots of people...FedEx especially. (they never did do well with rural route addresses) Mapping sites like Google and Mapquest have the old names in their databases. When truckers call for directions to our business, they can't "find" us, so I just tell them to look for the old street name. That works.
One of these days I'll have to drive out to Pittsburgh (with an "h"). Maybe Marty can take me to a Steelers game. :)
Hope you're surviving this last batch of winter weather. (i feel for Deanna...wow)
I always forget the H and spell check catches it.
interesting trivia Iggy; I never knew for a brief period of time Pittsburgh was missing its "H". I'm glad it was able to get it back and citizens "fought" for its restoration. I'm definitely routing for the Pittsburgh Steelers this weekend!!
enjoy your Wednesday!
betty
Huh ... that's a really cool history lesson. Thanks for that. I enjoy the educating and entertaining stories you write. Such a nice break!
Thanks!
Heather
Very interesting post, I sure hope you are staying warm and stay safe also HUGS
I like it spelled with the "h" better. It just looks right, lol!
My brother lived in Pittsburgh while attending school so I had the pleasure of visiting there several times. I like it there. We rode in that cable car! So fun.
well.. They nearly got the "h" kicked out them today at the Superbowl. But thank goodness they made a comeback and saved it.
That seems a little silly. Why drop the letter? I know they had there reasons, but it really doesn't seem like it was necessary.
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