Thursday, February 24, 2011

Name-calling, from Aberdonian to Zhuhainese

http://www.sporcle.com/games/BingDring/demonym_britain

If you are an Anglophile, try the quiz above. You'll find out that a person from Liverpool will not take kindly to your calling him a Liverpoolian. And that a Salopian is not an amphibian that had got itself into a fight in a saloon brawl. The quiz is quite fun, actually.

Trawling the Internet, I found that many other Netizens were as curious as I was about how to call people who are residents of, say, cities and other places.

I knew long ago that the denizens of Sydney are Sydneysiders and those from Glasgow are Glaswegians. I recently found out that someone from Cairo is a Cairene. Cairenes were very much in the news recently, with many brave folks taking to the streets in a so-called "Jasmine revolution" to topple the Mubarak regime.

But some places are not so easy to pin a demonym on its residents. What do you call the people of Christchurch, that unfortunate city in New Zealand's South Island ravaged by a terrible earthquake?

Some demonyms can be funny. Take the English town of Folkingham. It seems the correct pronunciation is similar to Buckingham but with an "F" sound. Its townsfolk are Folkers.

The A-Z list below is selective, and I have left out American (as in USA) demonyms for a separate posting:

Aberdeen (Scotland's third most populous city) -- Aberdonian
Alexandria (Egypt) -- Alexandrine
Birmingham (the one in England, not USA) -- no, not Birminghamster! Brummie.
Blackpool -- no again, people there don't call themselves Blackpudlians (if puzzled, see the quiz). But someone mentioned Sandgrown 'Un. Hmm?
Budapest -- I don't know this one. Budapester?
Buckinghamshire -- Bucksian
Cambridge (England) -- Cantabrigian (it seems that its olde name was "Cantebridge")
Chechnya -- Chechen
Cork -- Corkonian
El Salvador -- Salvadoran (but people from Salvador in Brazil call themselves Soteropolitanos)
Edinburgh -- Edinburger
Frankfurt -- Frankfurter?
Hamburg -- Hamburger?
Johannesburg -- Jo'burger
Kuala Lumpur -- KLite?
Lima (capital of Peru) -- Limerio
Macau -- Macanese
Manchester -- Mancunian
Melbourne -- Melburnian
Mumbai -- Mumbaikars (but when it was Bombay, were the people there "Bombayers"?)
Munich -- Munchner
Naples (Italy) -- Neapolitan
Newcastle -- Novocastrian
Oxford -- Oxonian
Perth -- Perthlite (some, it seems, call themselves Perthlings or Sandgropers)
Quebec -- Quebecker/Quebecer/Quebecois
Rio de Janeiro -- Carioca
Slough (England) -- Sluff
Sunderland (England) -- Mackem
Tasmania -- most folks here call themselves Tasmanians (not Tasmaniacs or Tasmanian Devils) but I've heard of some calling themselves Taswegians
Warsaw (Poland) -- Varsovian
Winnipeg -- Winnipegger
Wolverhampton -- Wulfrunian
Xalapa (Mexico) -- Xalaperio
Zhuhai (China) -- Zhuhainese

Singapore postscript: Now that the electoral boundaries are out, what if people from the various wards start giving themselves demonyms? Hougangers (or Hougangsters)? Whapiangs (for Whampoa residents)? Yuhua-lians and Yuhua-bengs? Ang Mo Kio Kia? (shortened to Ang Mo Kia?).

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