Gina from Athens, Texas, wonders if there’s any rhyme or reason to the names we give to the denizens of a particular place. There are a few general rules for creating demonyms, the names applied to the denizens of a particular locale. George R...
Andrea in San Diego, California, noticed a new restaurant with a name spelled in a curious way. Is there a term for this kind of intentional misspelling used in advertising? Onomastics is the study of naming, and a good source for information about...
We all lead busy lives—so are speed reading courses a good idea? Plus, if you hear someone speaking with a British accent, do you tend to assume they’re somehow more intelligent? And some common English surnames tell us stories about life in...
Many common English surnames–such as Taylor, Miller, Shoemaker, Smith, and many others–tell a story about life in the Middle Ages. Two good books on the study of names, also known as onomastics, are The Surname Detective and a Dictionary...
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...
A listener in Buford, Georgia, says his mother’s maiden name was Barnett, and reports that he was told that the addition of an “e” to a last name was once an indication that the person was descended from slave families. This is...