Tiny Kentucky Town Named ‘Hardest To Spell’ in the Whole State

Not only is this town the hardest to spell in the state of Kentucky, but it was also ranked the fifth hardest to spell in the country.

Back in elementary school, we had spelling tests every week. I can remember having to write each word down ten to twenty times a piece so that I could learn how to spell it correctly for the tests. These tests ended after elementary school, but I think that we should have had spelling tests all the way through high school because there are still some words that we have trouble spelling. For me, there are a few words that I struggle with, but the one that sticks out is "definitely." Granted, nowadays we have spell check and auto-correct on our phones to tell us that we have misspelled a word. We rely on these tools way too much and all of us can acknowledge that we have some words that we either speak into our phones when texting or we rely on our phones to auto-correct.

However, auto-correct only works so well. Especially when it comes to spelling out a town name that it doesn't recognize. I'm sure that you have taken a little road trip in the past and have driven through some towns that greet you with their "Welcome to (insert town name here)" sign. The majority of these towns have pretty normal names. However, there have been a few towns that I have been to that always make me wonder "Who thought this was a good town name?" But when you hear a town name and don't have the first clue how to spell it, that's a problem.

All throughout the Bluegrass State, there are towns with funny names like that. Some of these names are based on Native American culture, some were founded by immigrants from different parts of the world. However, that doesn't make them any easier to pronounce or spell! As it turns out, one of those towns was recently named among the most difficult to spell in the entire country.

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Tiny Kentucky Town Named ‘Hardest To Spell’ in the Whole State

24/7 Wallstreet put together the list of the 50 hardest-to-spell town names. They selected one name from each state using certain criteria. 24/7 Tempo looked at the U.S. Census Bureau's list of towns in the 2017 American Community Survey. Almost 30,000 town names were considered! They then basically had their editors pick the hardest ones to pronounce and spell.

The fifth hardest-to-spell town name in the country actually comes to us from Kentucky. While there might be many to choose from, Auxier, Kentucky was chosen as the hardest-to-spell town in the state. Auxier is located in Floyd County, and has a population of about 850 people.

This one’s a challenge: Auxier is named after a family who also used the spelling “Axer,” “Oxer,” and “Auxer.” They pronounced their name “ok-sur,” but some locals use “ox-yer.” Either way, it’s two syllables, not three.

What are some other Kentucky town names that are hard to spell? You can take a look at the full list by clicking here.