PITTSBURGH, Pa. (WHTM) – Pennsylvania is home to many “Burg/burgh” municipalities, 70 out of the 2,560 municipalities to be exact, so why is Pittsburgh one of two spelled with an “h? well, it wasn’t always like that.

Pittsburgh was founded in 1758 by General John Forbes and named after William Pitt, a British statesman, and is the second largest municipality in Pennsylvania with 302,898 people.

Although the original name of the city was “Pittsbourgh,” this would change once a city charter was granted in 1816 when the city would be spelled “Pittsburgh,” but copies made an error in the spelling that would spell the city as “Pittsburg,” according to Visit Pittsburgh.

This spelling error didn’t stop anyone as the name would remain Pittsburgh on most documentation, until 1891.

The United States Board of Geographic Names created some principles on place names in 1891 with one of them being that any place spelling ending in “burgh” would have to drop the “h.”

According to Positively Pittsburgh, a special section in the board’s report cited that the error printed charter from 1816 was correct and that the “h” was added by the Post Office.

Visit Pittsburgh states that members of the board were unaware that the copies were errors and that the original charter had it spelled correctly.

Although this new board officially changed the name to Pittsburg, the Pittsburgh Gazette, Pittsburgh Stock Exchange, the University of Pittsburgh, and the people of Pittsburgh refused to adapt to this change.

This would continue and the board decided to give the “h” back to Pittsburgh in 1911.