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A person from
London is a Londoner, a native of New York is a New Yorker
and if you live in Berlin you're a Berliner. The -er
is a Germanic ending but some places require the Latinate-ian.
So if someone is from Athens they're an Athenian, from Boston: a Bostonian,
from Philadelphia: a Philadelphian. Of course, there's no way
to know which of these endings to use. Even worse, some cities seem to go out of their way to confuse and confound the weary traveler. Scotland has several such. The citizens of Aberdeen and Dundee are Aberdonians and Dundonians but the people of Glasgow are Glaswegian. Those who call Dumfries their home are sometimes called Doonhamers ("down-homers") but why on Earth are the folk of Hawick called Teeries? England, too, is rife with traps for the unwary. The denizens of Liverpool are Liverpudlian because, after all, it's not a very big pool. Oxford and Cambridge display their classical education with Oxonian and Cantabrigian while Wolverhampton reaches back to its Anglo-Saxon roots for Wulfrunian. A person from
Lancaster is called Lancastrian and someone from Newcastle is a Novocastrian.
The connection lies in castra, Latin for "fort".
Place-names that end in -chester also derive from castra so,
assuming that someone from Manchester is not going to be a Manchesterer,
one might reasonably expect something like Mancastrian.
But that would be too easy. Who
would have guessed that it's actually Mancunian? Journeying further afield, we meet Monégasques in Monaco, Madrilenians in Madrid, Savoyards in Savoy and Sydneysiders in New South Wales. The people of Flanders (part of Belgium) speak Flemish and are called either Flems, Flemmings or Flanderkins, whereas their neighbors in Holland are Dutch or Netherlanders. We confess that we have one or two favorites among this strange collection. One of these is Trapezuntine, a native of Trebizond. [So, if Byzantine means "of Byzantium", and Trapezuntine means "of Trapezuntium", does turpentine mean of Turpentium? - Mike] [ You know very well that it doesn't, and stop interrupting! - Melanie]. And what a shame they changed the name of an island off the coast of Australia to Tasmania. When it was called Van Diemen's Land the inhabitants were Vandemonians. |
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Last Updated 04/17/02 10:22 PM