The Most Misspelled Streets (and Places) in Delaware

While there isn't a state-sanctioned registry keeping a tally of typos, mail carriers, delivery drivers, and local civil engineers will quickly tell you that the most misspelled streets in Delaware usually share their names with the state's most notorious rivers, hundreds (an old colonial division of land), and towns.

1. The Native American Tongue-Twisters

Delaware’s rich indigenous history, particularly from the Lenape and Nanticoke tribes, gives the state some of its most beautiful—and frequently misspelled—street and place names. If you live on one of these, you already know the pain of spelling your address letter-by-letter over the phone.

• Appoquinimink Drive / River: Whether referring to the river, the school district, or local roads, this is the ultimate Delaware spelling bee champion. The double 'p', the 'qui', and the 'ni' turn most envelopes into a sea of crossed-out letters.
• Hockessin (Various roads): Located in New Castle County, locals fiercely defend the pronunciation "HOE-kess-in." Because visitors hear the long "O," they frequently try to spell it "Hokesin," "Hoquessin," or sometimes assume it has an 'x' like "Hoax-in."
• Mispillion Street: Named after the river downstate. It sounds phonetic enough until you have to guess whether it has one 'l', two 'l's, an 'o', or a 'u' at the end.

2. The "Wait, We Don't Say It Like That Here" Club

Delawareans have a habit of looking at a perfectly normally spelled word and deciding, as a collective state, to pronounce it entirely differently. Anyone trying to type what they hear from a local will fail miserably.

• Newark: If you dictate an address here to your phone, you are in for a rough time. In Delaware, it is absolutely not pronounced like the city in New Jersey ("New-irk"). It is two distinct syllables: "New-ARK." Out-of-staters frequently try to spell it as two separate words ("New Ark").
• Houston: This small Kent County town (and its intersecting roads) completely ignores the famous Texas city. Delawareans proudly pronounce it "HOUSE-ton." Naturally, people try to spell it exactly how it sounds: "Houseton."
• Lewes: "The First Town in the First State" is a gorgeous coastal destination pronounced exactly like the name "LEW-is" (think Huey Lewis). If you tell an Uber driver to take you to Lewes, their GPS will almost certainly try to route them to a "Lewis Street" instead.

3. The Uniquely Delaware "Oddball" Streets

Sometimes, the spelling issue isn't about complex historical origins; it's about the fact that the street name looks like it belongs in another language, or the local dialect has completely warped the vowels.

• Loockerman Street (Dover): The main commercial drag in the state capital. Locals pronounce it "LAHK-ur-min." Because of the heavy local drawl and the baffling double 'o', visitors constantly type it into their maps as "Lockerman," "Lukerman," or "Locherman."
• Slaughter Beach Road: It sounds like a horror movie set, but it’s actually a peaceful bay town (named either after an early postmaster named Slaughter or a local legend about horseshoe crabs). Visitors often hesitate to type it out, assuming they must have misheard the rather aggressive name.
• Gumboro Road: Down in Sussex County, the heavy Eastern Shore dialect takes over. It is pronounced "GUM-burrah." Delivery drivers who are new to the area routinely try to type "Gumburra" or "Gumborough" into their routing software.

The Reality of Navigating the First State

Whether you're fighting old Dutch spellings or just trying to figure out how many vowels belong in "Appoquinimink," Delaware's roads are a testament to its deeply layered history. You aren't crazy for getting them wrong—the state might only have three counties, but it has enough confusing street names to fill a continent.