Can someone pronounce"Juniata" for me

June-e-at-a

 

 

Thank you Willygee.  This has been a question of mine for about 50 years.

Anxiously awaiting the answer.

I would pronounce it June--eee--ahhh-ta.

 

Tom 

Thanks all...where does the name originate from?..almost sounds native american.

The Juniata River?

I wish I'd have seen this thread earlier - for obvious reasons.

Jack is correct; Juniata Shops were named after the Juniata River.

Curt

It's not ahhh-ta.  It is pronounced at-a.  I am from the central PA area and everyone I have come in contact with has pronounced it at-a.

 

Joo-nee-at-uh

Definitely June-ee-at-uh.  God knows I spent enough time fishing and swimming in the river while growing up.

Even though I grew up in Lewistown, I still had to cheat and check Google to refresh my memory.

The word supposedly is the anglicized spelling of the Iroquois word for standing stone; Onayutta.  True?  Who knows.  Makes for a good story though.

Curt

You have all done so well on that one, how about Tehachapi? (spelling corrections welcome too)

Ta-hatch-uh-pee.

There's a railfan video out there where the British voiceover guy pronounces Juniata "Juanita" - like Barney Fife's girlfriend down at the diner. Maybe the letters got mixed up on his script.

so how did the river get its name

I found this from the book, Juniata, River of Sorrows:

 

Although the word, Attaock, on Smith’s “Map of Virginia” may be the earliest recorded reference to the Juniata River, the first word that resembles our word, Juniata, is on a 1655 Dutch map that called the Juniata the Onojutta, from the name of the Indians who lived on it: the Onojutta-Haga. Onojutta (pronounced Ooh-nee-ooh-ah-tah) means a vertical or standing stone and Haga (Hah-gah) means people or inhabitants. Onojutta-Haga, therefore, could be said to mean The People of the Standing Stone. The word, Onojutta, is related to the Mohawk word, Oneija (Ooh-nee-eh-ah-ha), meaning stone, and is the root of our word, Oneida, the avenue in many Pennsylvania towns. The town of Huntingdon on the Frankstown Branch was originally called Standing Stone and today has a township named Oneida. A nearby stream is called Stone Creek. The word, Onoya (Ooh-nee-ooh-ah-yah),alsomeaning stone, was the symbol of the Oneida Indians, who marked the entrance to their villages by placing a stone in the fork of a tree (Africa, 1896, p. 3; Guss, 1886, pp. 30-31) .

 

Tom

You might like this too from Norfolk Southern:

 

https://youtu.be/c7f3qnBPujs

 

Tom

Pennsylvania Rivers/Creeks.  Susquehanna, Monongahala, Allegheny, Tionesta, relatively simple Clarion.

Excellent video Thank you

Thanks

With the emphasis on "hatch" as in tuh-HATCH-uh-pee.