Garrett Langford at the kitchen table of his Ballard apartment, where his pronunciation of Iowa’s capital city has become what his girlfriend calls “a non-negotiable issue.” Credit: Emily Sato/The New York Time5
Garrett Langford at the kitchen table of his Ballard apartment, where his pronunciation of Iowa’s capital city has become what his girlfriend calls “a non-negotiable issue.” Credit: Emily Sato/The New York Time5

SEATTLE — The apartment that Garrett Langford shares with his girlfriend, Megan Calloway, is a quiet, orderly place. The kitchen counter holds a French press, a sourdough starter in its third month of life, and a small wooden bowl of lemons that neither of them has used but both agree looks right. The living room has a sectional sofa positioned to face both the television and the window, a compromise Mr. Langford describes as “architecturally ideal” and Ms. Calloway describes as “fine.” It is, by any measure, a functional household.

It was into this domestic equilibrium that Mr. Langford, 31, a UX designer originally from Fremont, introduced what Ms. Calloway, 29, a marketing coordinator from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has described as “the one thing I cannot get past.”

He pronounces the S in “Des Moines.”

“He says ‘Dez Moynze,’” Ms. Calloway said, sitting at the kitchen table with both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. “Like it’s two words that both end in consonants. I’ve corrected him. I’ve shown him videos. I played him a clip of a local news anchor saying it correctly, and he said the anchor was ‘probably just being casual.’”

Mr. Langford, who was present for the interview but seated on the far end of the sectional, maintained that his pronunciation was “phonetically defensible.”

“It’s spelled D-E-S M-O-I-N-E-S,” he said. “There are two S’s. I’m not adding anything. If anything, she’s subtracting.”

The dispute, which Ms. Calloway dates to a dinner with her parents in November, has become a recurring source of friction in their fourteen-month relationship. Her parents, Dale and Connie Calloway of Cedar Rapids, were reportedly “very quiet” after Mr. Langford referred to a weekend trip they had taken to “Dez Moynze” to visit the state capitol.

“My dad just looked at his plate,” Ms. Calloway said. “My mom asked if he’d ever been to Iowa before. He said no. She said, ‘We can tell.’”

Dr. Patricia Olmstead, a sociolinguist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies regional pronunciation norms, said the conflict was not unusual but was more revealing than most couples realize.

“Pronunciation of place names is one of the last remaining markers of genuine regional belonging,” Dr. Olmstead said. “When someone mispronounces a place you’re from, it doesn’t register as an error. It registers as an identity claim — specifically, the claim that they are not from where you are, and that they have not bothered to learn.”

She added that the silent consonants in French-derived American place names — Des Moines, Boise, Versailles — function as “in-group passwords.”

“If you say ‘Ver-SAYLZ’ in Versailles, Kentucky, they know you’re not local,” Dr. Olmstead said. “If you say ‘Dez Moynze’ in Iowa, you have effectively announced that you consider their state a flyover.”

Mr. Langford rejected this characterization. “I have nothing against Iowa,” he said. “I think it’s a perfectly fine state. I just think that if you name your capital city after a French word, you have to accept that some people are going to pronounce the letters.”

He then introduced what he called “the thing she never wants to talk about.”

Des Moines, Washington — a city of approximately 32,000 people located twenty minutes south of Seattle, between SeaTac and Federal Way — pronounces the S. It has always pronounced the S. Mr. Langford grew up passing exit signs for it on Interstate 5. To him, “Deh MOYNZ” is not a mispronunciation. It is the local default.

“There’s a Des Moines right here,” he said, gesturing vaguely southward. “We say the S. Everyone says the S. I didn’t know there was a version where you don’t say the S until I met her.”

Ms. Calloway closed her eyes briefly.

“That’s a different Des Moines,” she said.

“It’s the same words,” Mr. Langford said.

“It is not the same words.”

Dr. Olmstead said the existence of Des Moines, Washington, complicated the dispute in a way that was “linguistically fascinating and, for the relationship, almost certainly unhelpful.” She noted that the Washington city’s pronunciation had diverged from its Iowa namesake at some point after its founding in 1889, likely under the influence of English-dominant settlers who, unlike Iowa’s earlier French-influenced population, “simply read the letters and moved on.”

“You essentially have two communities who named themselves the same thing and then developed completely incompatible rules for how to say it,” Dr. Olmstead said. “Mr. Langford is not wrong that he grew up with a valid local pronunciation. He is wrong that this fact will help him.”

Ms. Calloway said the issue had metastasized beyond Des Moines — either of them. She reported that Mr. Langford had recently been overheard pronouncing “Illinois” with the S and referring to the state of Arkansas as “Ar-Kansas,” though he denied both.

“I was being ironic,” he said.

“He was not being ironic,” Ms. Calloway said.