Saginaw is the seat of Saginaw County in the area known as Mid-Michigan (Southeast for MBBA). Saginaw County MSA had a population of 190,124 in 2020. The city is also the largest municipality in the Saginaw, Midland, and Bay City Metropolitan Area, with a combined population of 377,474 in 2020.
Saginaw was a thriving lumber town in the 19th century and an important industrial city and manufacturing center throughout much of the 20th century.
The name Saginaw is widely believed to mean “where the Sauk were” in Ojibwe, from Sace-nong or Sak-e-nong (Sauk Town), due to the belief that the Sauk once lived there. But it is more likely that the name means “place of the outlet”, from the Ojibwe sag (opening) and ong (place of).

When Natives told Samuel de Champlain that the Sauk nation was on the western shore of Lake Michigan, Champlain mistakenly placed them on the western shore of Lake Huron. This mistake was copied on subsequent maps, and future references identified this as the place of the Sauks. Champlain himself never visited what is now Michigan.[12] Saginaw is Chippewa for Sauk be no more. Named after the Chippewa natives Conquered the Sauk natives.