Name of Pittsburgh
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- Main Article: Pittsburgh
The name of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has a complicated history. Pittsburgh is one of the few U.S. cities or towns to be spelled with an h at the end of a burg suffix. The earliest known reference to the settlement was found in a letter sent from General John Forbes to William Pitt dated "Pittsbourgh, 27th November, 1758".
Burgh is the Scots language and Scottish English cognate of the English language borough, which has other cognates in words and place names in virtually every Indo-European and Semitic language, as well as others. The first recorded reference using the current spelling is found on a survey map made for the Penn family in 1769. In the city charter, granted on March 18, 1816, the Pittsburgh spelling is used on the original document, but due to an apparent printing error, the Pittsburg spelling is found on official copies of the document printed at the time.
On December 23, 1891, a recommendation by the United States Board on Geographic Names to standardize place names was signed into law. The law officially changed the spelling of the city name to Pittsburg, and publications would use this spelling for the next 20 years. However, the change was very unpopular in the city, and several businesses and organizations refused to make the change. Responding to mounting pressure, the United States Geographic Board (a successor to the original United States Board on Geographic Names) reversed the decision on July 19, 1911, and the Pittsburgh spelling was restored. [1]
It is also believed that Pittsburgh's large German population during this era aided in the famous "H" controversy by not using the "H" in the city's name, since most German cities have "burg" at the end of the names without the "H."
The confusion and controversy surrounding the aborted spelling change means that both the Pittsburgh and the Pittsburg spelling were commonly encountered around the turn of the 20th Century, and continued use of Pittsburgh still occur to this day; a DVD of the band Dropkick Murphys, for example, uses the incorrect spelling.
Perhaps the most familiar reference to the H-less spelling is on the renowned T-206 baseball card of Pittsburgh Pirates legend Honus Wagner, printed in 1909. Its scarcity, even at the time, combined with Wagner's reputation as one of the greatest players in baseball history, made it the most valuable sports card of all time. The Pirates' uniforms of the time read "PITTSBURG" across the chest, although the portrait of Wagner makes it appear as if there could be a "H" on the end, cut off by the border of the picture. But the caption beneath it reads, "WAGNER, PITTSBURG".
