Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Pelkie, Michigan" in English language version.
French Canadian woodsmen settled at a place in Baraga County in 1885 known as King's Land; but when farmers arrived to till the cutover land, the place became Pelkie, named after an early settler.
Johnson and the other settlers decided to call the community Kyrö, after the place they came from in Finland. After the railroad was built through the cleared land, the name of the place was changed to Kuro when the station was so named. Later it was called Pelkie, which Järnefelt-Rauanheimo thinks may have come from the name Pelkinen. No one of that name, however, is known to have lived there.
Interpreting and identifying place-names solely by the resemblance of sound is futile. For example, Pelkie, the ... Baraga County, is commonly thought of as a Finnish name. But contrary to popular belief, Pelkie derives its name from the surname of one of its former French Canadian settlers.
