9 Michigan Town Names That Make Out-of-Staters Do a Double Take

The village of Climax, between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, got its name from a view.

Michiganders drive past names like that every day, and out-of-staters stop mid-sentence.

Here are the Michigan town names that make out-of-staters do a double take, and the stories behind them.

1. Ubly

Ubly is a village in Huron County with a name that doesn’t match the place it honors.

The community was first called Sidon, a biblical name.

Locals proposed Pagettville, after Alfred Pagett, who ran the first market.

Pagett said no.

He suggested a British village he liked instead.

The application was somehow changed to Ubly in D.C., though the English village is spelled Ubley.

If you look up the English village, you’ll need that extra e.

2. Zilwaukee

Zilwaukee, in Saginaw County, was first spelled Zilwaukie.

Local legend says founders Daniel and Solomon Johnson chose the name to echo Milwaukee.

German immigrants in New York City, the story goes, signed work agreements believing they were headed to Milwaukee.

A historian at the Castle Museum of Saginaw County History says the name’s source is undocumented.

If you’ve crossed the Saginaw River on I-75, you’ve driven the Zilwaukee Bridge, which runs about 1.5 miles.

3. Free Soil

In 1848, Free Soil Township in what is now Mason County took its name from a political party.

At the time, the township stretched from Lake Michigan to what is now the Lake County line.

The Free Soil Party formed around a single issue, opposing the spread of slavery into the western territories.

The party was short-lived.

The name stayed on the map.

The village of Free Soil came along in the early 1860s.

Philip Riter and his family settled east of what became Riter Swamp.

Many of the settlers were loggers.

4. Novi

Oakland County’s Novi name came out of a meeting where residents wanted something short.

Some speakers complained that long names like Farmington were bothersome to write, according to an 1877 county history.

At an 1830 meeting of local residents, Dr. J. C. Emery proposed Novi, a name his wife had suggested.

Townspeople accepted it with little opposition.

At the legislative council, an Ann Arbor man objected to it.

He said he thought the Latin meant unknown or forgotten.

The name passed anyway.

The township was detached from Farmington in 1832.

Write it once on a form, and you’ll see why the township liked four letters.

5. Climax

Between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, the village of Climax got its name from a view.

Judge Caleb Eldred arrived in the area in 1834, and his son Dan climbed a tree for a better look.

The family had spent months traveling to find a farm site.

Dan said the view capped the climax of everything the family had seen.

It became known as Climax Prairie.

By 1877, the community and its post office had shortened the name to Climax.

Many out-of-staters smirk at the sign before they learn the story.

If you expected a punchline, you’ll get a tree instead.

6. Ishpeming

Ishpeming’s name comes from the Ojibwa word ishpiming, which means above, in the air or on high.

The European settlement was known as the Lake Superior Location until it was renamed Ishpeming in 1862.

Ishpeming became a city in 1873.

You’ll find it in Marquette County, where iron ore deposits helped the town grow in the 1800s.

Many out-of-staters stall on the spelling before they try saying it, and you might too.

7. Bad Axe

Bad Axe is the county seat of Huron County, and its name came from an axe.

It is the largest community in Huron County and a commercial center for the upper Thumb.

Before the Civil War, workers surveying the first widely used trail through the Thumb wilderness made camp and found a badly damaged axe, according to the Huron County Economic Development Corporation.

The name went into the survey minutes and onto a trail sign.

It stuck.

The place was later called Bad Axe Corners.

8. Hamtramck

Hamtramck honors a colonel, though Detroit mostly surrounds the city today.

Colonel Jean Francois Hamtramck lived from 1756 to 1803.

If you’re wondering who he was, he came down from Canada to fight for the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

Hamtramck Township was created and named after him in 1798.

The city incorporated in 1922 to avoid annexation by Detroit.

The surname is murkier.

Detroit Public Radio reports that a genealogist found the colonel’s father came from Luxembourg City, and she says the name looks Germanic.

An immigration clerk may have written the name down phonetically.

An 1889 article listed his paternal grandfather as David Hamtrenck.

Many out-of-staters assume the name is French.

9. Mackinaw City

Mackinaw City spells its name with a w at the end, while Mackinac Island uses a c.

You'll see both spellings on a map, but the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau says you say them the same way, with an aw at the end.

The name comes from Michilimackinac, an Anishinaabek name meaning place of the great turtle.

In 1715, French soldiers built Fort Michilimackinac on the mainland, where Mackinaw City is today.

The fort came first.