Due to the dumbest possible circumstances, Pike Place Market officials have announced they are changing the 112-year-old public market’s name so as to not confuse the hayseeds.

“Quite frankly we were tired of having to correct everyone all the time,” says Pike’s Place Market board member Ron Stoffel. “I couldn’t go another day of nodding and smiling at some flyover state idiot who claimed their grandfather had once met ‘Mr. Pike.’”

Founded in 1907 and named after the street that runs right through the middle of it, Pike Place Market became a hub for farmers and craftsmen (women were not allowed in for another 90 years).

“Sometime in the last hundred years, out-of-town yokels began pronouncing it ‘Pike’s,’ with an apostrophe and an s, for no explicable reason,” says University of Washington Professor and all-around Seattle-expert William Butherly. “The market held the line on this for so long, but it’s not surprising to see them buckle now.”

Along with the name change, the Market is also debuting its new mascot, Pikey, a six-foot tall representation of a freshwater fish, sometimes capable of eating waterfowl and small mammals, and considered an invasive species in Washington.

“Between the new mascot and all the new signs, we think we’re really gonna see a jump in honey stick and Space Needle t-shirt sales around here,” Stoffel said.