SWEDEN – The quickest way to distinguish between a local and someone from away in this Maine town may be to ask them to say the name of Keys Pond.

People unfamiliar with the nearby body of water take a phonetic approach, as if discussing the keys to the car.

Those with local roots, however, pronounce the name as in “Keyes” Pond, which rhymes with “eyes.”

“My husband grew up in Sweden, and it’s always been Keyes Pond,” is how Town Clerk Beryl Merrill put it, matter-of-factly.

But it’s not just the pronunciation issue that has caught the attention of the Keyes Pond Environmental Protection Association. According to member Jane Gibbons, Keyes Pond should be both pronounced and spelled with an additional “e.”

That’s why the association has spent the last year trying to change the name for use on future maps and documents.

The name, according to association member Richard Lyman, who is also a historian, derived from that of minor historical figure Solomon Keyes. Early maps of the Sweden area identify the water body as “Keyes Pond.”

It wasn’t until a 1909 U.S. Geological Survey map that the spelling became “Keys.”

In an effort to overturn this error, the Keyes Pond association has been writing letters in hopes of getting the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to change the pond’s name. If they are successful, the name will be changed in a national database that serves as the primary resource for maps put together by the U.S. Geological Survey and also big mapmakers like Rand McNally and DeLorme.

Roger Payne, executive secretary of the Board on Geographic Names, said Wednesday the Keyes Pond application – which has been expanded to include a request for a change in the name of what is today known as Keys Brook – is not complete.

Three agencies – the state authority for names, the appropriate county council and the board of selectmen from a place where a name change is requested – typically must respond, he said. If all goes well, a name-change request can be completed in four months.

“Basically, the federal government doesn’t care what the name is, and the reason is (that) our job is to standardize name services, not regulate,” Payne said.

He added, however, that not all name-change requests are approved.

When the Board on Geographic Names meets each month, Payne said, the members approach requests with the understanding that names are a part of language, “and language evolves.”

“Changing a name is a big deal – even though this is a one-letter difference – because it means changing the name on scores of maps and documents,” Payne said.

Jennifer Runyon, a research assistant under Payne, has been working with the Keyes Pond association since it filed for the name change. The state names authority and the Oxford County Council actually have approved the change, she said. “All we really haven’t heard from now is the town of Sweden.”

According to Dana Nason of the Sweden Board of Selectmen, the board supports the change, but he’s not sure when a response will be sent.

For Nason, the change request is not such an urgent matter.

“For some reason there are some people who feel that because it’s not spelled correctly, it’s not pronounced correctly, and that’s simply not true,” he said with a slight chuckle. “To be honest, the people that live here really don’t care.”

For Keyes Pond association members like Lyman, the issue is as much an academic one as anything else.

“It’s really just an interesting case of an error having been made” Lyman said, and learning how to rectify it.