How Do You Pronounce "Cuyahoga"?

I'm just going to tell you this once. Despite what you might be hearing on television and radio these days, "Cuyahoga" is pronounced something like this: /ky-uh-HAUG-uh/.

It's not pronounced /ky-uh-HOGE-uh/--this is how many of the current TV and radio people say it. That third syllable receives the accent and sounds, at least in Northern Midwest American English, like the words hog or dog or the first syllable in the word Awful. There is an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for this sound, but I don't have that symbol on my computer. The IPA symbol looks like a rounded /a/ sound, and that's exactly what it is.

Some people from outside Cuyahoga County (in Summit or Portage Counties) pronounce Cuyahoga something like /KY-uh-guh/. We look down on those people and their pronunciation.

It is said (in many, many places) that Cuyahoga comes from an Indian word that means "crooked" or "crooked river." Of course there is no one Indian language; my guess is that Cuyahoga comes from the Iroquoian group of languages, and the most likely source would have been the closest Iroquoian tribe, the Seneca. The Erie Indians were also Iroquoian, but they were annihilated by the Iroquois Confederation around 1654, a war of genocide.