Chief Oshkosh of the Menominee tribe.

MENOMONIE
For those of us in the Chippewa Valley, this spelling is the “right” one – or at least the one we’re most familiar with. As with the other spellings, the Dunn County city’s name comes from the name the Ojibwe gave to their neighbors, who lived in a large territory in what is now Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, early European settles spelled “our” Menomonie with an “ie” to avoid confusion with other Wisconsin locales.

MENOMINEE
If there’s an “official” spelling of the word, this is probably it. It’s the name of a Native American tribe and that tribe’s reservation; the name of a Wisconsin county contiguous with the reservation; as well as the name of a river and a city in Michigan. The Menominee were among the people French explorer Jean Nicolet encountered when he came ashore at Green Bay in 1634. (Of course, he thought they were Chinese.)

MENOMONEE
If you’re from the Milwaukee area, chances are this is how you spell it. This spelling applies to the river that flows into the state’s largest city (and ultimately Lake Michigan via the Milwaukee River); to the Menomonee Valley, an industrial neighborhood in Milwaukee; and to the nearby suburb of Menomonee Falls.

MANOOMINII
This is the original Ojibwe word for the tribe, which in the Ojibwe’s language means “wild rice people,” a reference to the other tribe’s staple food. However, as is often the case when it comes to tribal names, this is not what the Menominee call themselves: In their own language, they are “Mamaceqtaw,” or simply “The People.”

ME-NO-MONIE
The hard-to-spell (and to pronounce) name lends itself pretty easily to a pun, and a few years back the folks at Me-No-Monie Street Pawn & Loan grabbed it. (Get it: “Me No Money?” Of course you did!) The pawn shop is located, naturally, on Menomonie Street in Eau Claire.