Well, yesterday I discovered what demonyms were! I already knew it, I just didnt know there was an actual linguistic term for it. (Demo is Greek for the people, as in democracy). Its the term that people from a geographic area use to refer to themselves. For example, if someone is from Florida, do they call themselves Floridans, Floridians, or Floridites, or Floriditers. Anyone from Florida knows the answer, but most of the rest of us dont have a clue. Or, if its a city, what do the people from Thunder Bay call themselves? Id guess Thunder Bayers, but for all I know it could be Thunder Bayans, or Thunder Bayites, or maybe just Thunderers? (hats off to my friend there, Ron Christiansen). How do you refer to yourself if youre from Connecticut? Connecticutians? Whats logical doesnt always work and may not be what is actually used by locals. I lived in Alaska for years, and there is a city there on the south coast called Valdez. Now he was an early Spanish explorer, so everyone in the country calls the city what it is called in Spanish, which is Val-dez. But in Alaska, the town is called Val-deez; (and I seem to recall they call themselves Valdeezians, but I wouldnt swear to it). I do not know what the people from the Alaskan native village of Tatitlik call themselves. Then there are the terms that OTHER people call the people who come from a particular place, and those terms are not always flattering. Chicago is a Potawatomi Indian word that is roughly translated as place of the stinky skunk cabbage, a term not exactly pleasing to the city fathers there, who in at least some books translate it instead to place where two rivers meet. But it can get more complicated. In addition to the name you use for the place you come from, there are a whole additional set of terms based on what people call a particular geographic feature they DONT necessarily live in or near. Those terms are called toponyms. For example, the people who live in the general vicinity of the tallest Mt in North America call it Mt. Denali (Alaska) and always have; its a native term for the Great One. But to honor President McKinley, government officials in Washington re-named it Mt. McKinley. Thats the term everybody else in the country has used to refer to the mountain for 100 years, and its what appears officially on all US Federal Geological maps. It was only a couple decades ago that Alaska made a concerted effort to have the Mt officially renamed Mt. Denali, which was no imposition on the locals, because they had been using that name all along. Besides, no one there could figure out why the Mt was named after McKinley since he had never been there or done anything in particular to support or honor the place. You can turn it into a game. Take a guess at what you think the people from a particular state or province or city call themselves, then look it up on line. If youre lucky, youll get it right maybe 1 out of 3 guesses. Just a thought.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 18:24:41 +0000
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