RAD or ROD? Here’s What You Told Us About How To Say ‘Colorado’

Last week, we asked how you pronounce the name of our fair state in the wake of yet another social media debate on the subject.

Our study isn't exactly scientific — in fact, it's not scientific at all — but it's a fun experiment. And it appears that the RADDERs have it.

We had about 1,700 responses to our two questions, which asked people to self-report whether they are a Colorado native and their preferred pronunciation based on our phonetic spellings.

One thing we weren't honestly expecting was to somewhat confirm the conventional wisdom that natives say "Colo-RAD-o," but our results indicate more than two-thirds do. Meanwhile, transplants are a bit more than 50 percent more likely to be RODDERs.

It's interesting to note that Gov. Jared Polis shared our poll and publicly reported that he's a native and uses the "ROD" pronunciation.

Metro State University linguist Rich Sandoval told 9News in 2018 that there were five basic ways to pronounce the name of our state, though he refused to call any one of them right or wrong.

Are you curious about something in the Centennial State? Ask us a question via Colorado Wonders and we’ll try to find the answer.