Residents of Maine are called “Mainers,” people in Texas are “Texans,” those in Wisconsin are “Wisconsinites,” and people in Phoenix are … “Phoenicians”? Grant and Martha explain that there are consistent rules for the naming the locals. The book they reference is Paul Dickson’s Labels for Locals. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Names for Locals”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
This is Daryl Van Dyke from Coppell, Texas.
I was driving recently up in New England, and I was listening to NPR stations, of course, and I heard a local station describe people from Maine as being Mainers, and it just sounded odd.
I don’t know why it just struck me as odd.
And then I got to thinking through my head about what are people called from other states?
So I started running through all the state names in my head, and there were some I could name and some I had not a clue.
And then when I came back to my house, I started doing some research and found out, like, in the U.S. States, 24 have a derivative from some type of Indian name, and the rest are French derivatives and English and Latin.
And I was looking for some rule that would say, okay, if you’re from Texas, you add this to the end of it.
If you’re from Illinois, add an incident, add this.
And I couldn’t come up with any type of a rule because names are all over the map.
Literally, yeah.
So I’m curious.
Hey, Daryl, how about seven rules?
Seven?
Well, wait a second.
Explain Maynard to me a second.
I thought they were called Downeasters.
They’re probably called that as well.
Oh, are they? Okay. I didn’t know.
I don’t know. What’s the more standard term?
I thought it was Mainer.
And so you heard Mainer on the radio?
Yes.
Okay.
Because there are a few states where one of the names for the person from that state doesn’t sound so fantastic.
Like, you’re from Connecticut. Are you a Connecticut-?
It doesn’t sound good, so they call themselves nutmeggers usually, or at least in the papers.
Well, I wasn’t kidding about the seven rules.
I think there are at least seven rules for naming people from different states.
Like, for example, if the place name ends in A or I-A, then you add an N, like Alaska or California.
If it ends in, say, O-N, then you add I-A-N.
And there’s a whole list of rules like this.
And Utah is weird because it ends in a consonant, but it’s a vowel sound.
So throwing an N on the N makes sense out loud, but maybe it looks a little odd in print.
Right.
There are two spellings, by the way, for that.
For the Utah?
Yeah, yeah.
Daryl, sometimes they put just an N, and sometimes it’s U-T-A-H-A-N.
Right, right.
But the preferred one is U-T-A-H-N.
Yeah.
There are a lot of those.
If it ends in an O, you’re supposed to add an A-N, like Chicago and Chicagoan.
That makes sense.
Colorado.
If it ends in a silent E, you’re supposed to add I-T-E or E-R, so Maine and Mainer.
Okay, very good.
So they go on and on.
You know, I was curious about people from Phoenix.
Do they really call themselves Phoenicians?
I believe they do.
That’s what this, I’m looking at a list of these words, and that’s what they call them.
Daryl, we’ll post these rules on our site and links to a few other sources.
The best book for this, and we’ve talked about this before, is Paul Dixon’s book, Labels for Locals.
There’s a relatively new edition.
I think it came out last year.
And he has terms for people from every state, all the nations, many of the cities, a lot of other regional names.
And he just kind of nails it and talks about the debates and the alternatives and the variety that you can get there.
Because sometimes what the locals call themselves is not the same as what the Associated Press might prefer to call them.
Exactly. Or the term in legal language as well.
Yeah, or the term in legal language. It’s sometimes a disagreement there.
So it’s a great book. We’ll link to it and put a couple other things up as well.
That is great. That’s very helpful.
And I can’t wait to get my hands on it and read it.
All right, super duper.
It’d be great for another long drive, right?
It would be.
Daryl, thanks for calling.
It’s been great.
Thank you very much.
Our pleasure.
Take care.
I guess he’s a capelian.
A capelian.
He’s a Texan above all, don’t forget.
That’s right.
Don’t mess with him.
What do they call people where you’re from?
The nice things.
Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.
