Demonyms are the words for people from particular places, and Mike in New York has been turning them into a family road-trip game for decades. Some are predictable, such as New Yorker or Californian, but local forms and old associations quickly scramble the pattern: residents of Phoenix are Phoenicians, and people from Troy are Trojans. Historian George Stewart described seven rules for these municipal onomastics, including adding -n after place names ending in -a or -ia, but the exceptions are plentiful. Paul Dickson’s Labels for Locals gathers many more of them. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Rules for Forming “Demonyms,” the Names People From a Certain Place Are Called”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, how are you? This is Mike Flintin calling from New York.
I have a question. There’s something that started decades ago when my kids were small and we would take long city rides and get bored.
We would play, what are these people called? And what that was was I would challenge the kids, they were in middle school, and I would challenge them to figure out what residents of a given city were called.
For instance, Bostonians were from Boston and people from New York. We’re New Yorkers, but when you get into other cities, there didn’t seem to be a rule and there didn’t seem to be a logic.
And sometimes you simply couldn’t guess what somebody would be called. For instance, people from San Francisco called San Franciscans. What are people called from, I don’t know, Phoenix, Arizona, Miami, Florida, McAdooches, Texas, or Cave City, Kentucky? Any of those.
It got pretty complex. And I never found a rule of thumb, philosophy, or anything in any kind of language rule that would guide to my kids.
Now I find that I’m a grandfather, and I’m playing the same game with my grandson. I still don’t have any rules for it.
Yeah, I think my first suggestion would be find a different game. Very likely. You know, play Padiddle or auto-licensed bingo or something.
But I’ve always stressed to them, each of my children and my grandchildren, that the words are toys. And as long as you’ve got words and you understand words, you always have toys to play with. You can’t lose them. You can’t harm them.
I love that. That’s amazing. We’re stealing that as our slogan.
Well, to answer your question, what we’re talking about is what we call demonyms from the Greek word for people. We also get the word democracy from the same root. D-E-M-O-N-Y-M. Yes, demonyms.
But the problem, as you’ve already suspected, is that although there are some rules for this, there are at least seven. And they’re very complicated beyond that. And there are a lot of exceptions.
There was a historian named George Stewart who came up with seven of these rules. And there are too many to go into here right now. But I tell you what, if you Google municipal onomastics, if you have, that’s municipal, O-N-O-M-A-S-T-I-C-S, municipal onomastics, you’ll find these rules.
And they include things like if the place name ends in A or I-A, then you add an N, like Californian. And if it ends in an O-N, then you add I-A-N, like Oregonian. But it gets long and complicated.
I mean, you mentioned Phoenix, and the people in Phoenix are called Phoenicians, like the ancient people. In Troy, if you live in Troy, you’re a Trojan. I mean, it just gets pretty crazy.
There is a book that you can find that has some of these gathered together. The book is called Labels for Locals. It’s by Paul Dixon. It’s easy to find on Amazon for new or used, and I highly recommend that. It’s got some fun stuff in it.
That sounds outstanding. I’ll have to get that, and I’ll have to study up. So the next time my grandson challenges me, I’ll have all the answers.
Okay. Mike, thanks for calling.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
What do they call people where you’re from? The name of your town, your county, your state, whatever, 877-929-9673.
Or tell us about the weird names of places and people that you know in email. Words@waywordradio.org.
