Well seems you need to get out and about a bit, your friends circle is way too small, I've heard many positivities about Brummagem, but maybe that's cus I'm well travelled and have a circle of friends bigger than I can really handle.
Wierdest demonym was what we locals called people in our tiny town in tunisia, Dehiba, which we'd call ourselves "Min Anakin" (meaning "of anakin") as an adjective. Reason being, Dehiba is in the Tataouine Governorate of tunisia, so we made a pun in the 1990s in reference to the planet the star wars character Anakin was born on
@@G6JPG It's one of our biggest cities haha. But I lived really rurally when I lived there. Now I'm studying in Germany, but plan to go back when I'm done. It's hot as fuck, but our tiny town is super sweet and very multiethnic, with a lot of Tunisians, but also loads of libyans, tuaregs, and sometimed Bedouins even stop there for a few months :)
@@tomthornton6259 I've heard "fish nabbers" and "cod heads" (where heads would be pronounced as heeds of course.) North Shields is still an active fishing port.
I’m a Geordie. A lot of years ago I worked with the British Army in the extreme south of England. Those rascally squaddies called all northeners “ganyams”. When I asked why, I was told that it all depends on homesickness and weekend leave. “It’s Friday and I’m gannin hyem”. (It’s Friday and I’m going home)
There's something interesting to be said about how the great vowel shift is less and less impactful the further north you go and people in the north seem to speak closer to old English, not only in pronunciation but in vocabulary with words like haem in Scotland and bairn
In the army, Black Country people are sometimes called "Yam Yams". "Yam" in Black Country speak = "Y'am" = "You am", which elsewhere is said "You are". "Wim" = "We am" = "We are". "Them" = "They am" = "They are".
@@ianallan8005 Hyem, and Hame different words entirely, and both can be found in Northumberland, with Hame being popular in the North, and Hyem being popular in the South.
I like how Nottingham apparently comes from a local king Snot and everybody collectively decided to forget that and people from Nottingham are not called Snots
Never proved. May be an urban myth. A nearby village Sneinton may or may not have that origin but that's suspect too. Nottingham people are called "duckies" or " boggers".
And apparently the story is true, told to excise men when they were almost caught one night trying to retrieve smuggled brandy hidden in a lake. They got away with it too.
I'm near a Manchester in the US, I was a bit surprised to see that the demonym is Mancunian. It comes from an older Latin word, Mancunium, of uncertain etymology, from the city's Roman days (in 79 AD).
The etymology of Manchester derives from the latinised version of the pre-roman name "Mamcucium" - The "Chester" part relates to a place where the romans built a fort.
For short the people are called “Manc/ Manc’s” throughout all of England. Altho I heard a scouser call em a “Manny” (they are suppose to not get along in a similar sense to NYers n Jerseyers)
You have accidentally overlooked that people in Birmingham and the surrounding area call Birmingham "Brum". It hasn't fallen out of use. Brummie is a person from Brum... It isn't much of a leap given the abbreviated form of the old name for the town / city hasn't fallen out of use.
Yam yams are people from the black country north of Birmingham. Walsall and Wolverhampton Dudley and West Bromwich the biggest town and cities. Brummies and yam yams don't like being muddled up
you've just blown my mind, I'm from Doncaster and I've met people who say Dee and Daa and never understood why. My American friends online always find it funny when an occasional "thee" pops out
Wools are also from Wigan, St. Helens, Warrington. Basically anybody who isn't Scouse! Source: my Dad's family are from Liverpool and my Mum's family is from Wigan !
Also living in Plymouth, I think the Janner name is more about the accent. A regional Devonian accent (farmer accent closer to a Somerset or Bristolian accent) and Plymouth accent (Jannarrrr) do sound different. Different again to a Cornish accent as well. One thing that unites them all is overpronouncing Rs.
As someone who is interested in traditional accents and dialects, it would be great if you could explain what the differences are. West Country accents are some of my favourites.
Plymothian here, best way I describe it, would be, Janners drop the T and emphasise er in words, Plymothian will pronounce the T and not emphasise the er in words
I grew up around Totnes and never knew people from Plymouth were known as Janners. I would seldom hear the word and never enquired as to what it meant. A strong westcountry accent in Plymouth though. I always found it strange that the most yokel, bumpkin accents are often found in the citys of Plymouth and Bristol. I was at a friends place in Totnes once when she was raided by police. There was someone loudly knocking on the door and as soon as i heard their accents i knew who it was - Plymouth DS. I think the Bristol and Plymouth accents are similar but Bristol being a little softer. Cornish a bit more nasal and twangy if you know what i mean.
@@MrOoYT Janners can make a real meal of the 'or' sound in words. Devon accent for 'door,' 'floor,' and 'more,' would be 'dorrrrr,' 'florrr, and 'morrrre' - while Janner would be closer to 'doo-er,' 'floo-er,' and 'moo-er.' Our 'oh' sounds tend to be a bit more on the 'posh-sounding' side as well... I did try to think about how that could be written phonetically, but damn is it ever hard! Literally just imagine a small child saying "oh" in a Downton Abbey accent, and that's pretty close to how a Janner would say it. 😊 Oh - except my son has just reminded me that I tend to pronounce 'oh' sounds at the END of words as 'er' - as in "win-der" and "foll-er" for "window" and "follow." And l's/double l's at the ends of words as w's - i.e. 'shall,' wheel,' and 'all' as "sha-uw," "whee-uw," and "aww." I mean, it's all true, but reading this back I can't help feeling like I must sound like a proper knuckle-dragger every time I open my mouth...!
Worth noting that the egg part of the possible "cockney" origin story is because the Middle English word was ey. Which is funny because the Old English word was ǣg, we lost the G and then found it again later
The Old English “g” was not always pronounced as in the hard closed “gg” in the modern word “egg.” Position your throat as if to say the g, but don’t close off your throat as you pronounce it. It sounds to our ears like the “y” sound we have now and it was sometimes transliterated with “y” or “g”.
Think the two were used concurrently until printers fixed the hard g sound. I remember reading about a group of medieval travellers who were hungry and stopped at a farmstead to ask for food but asked for eggs rather than ei, only to be told that the farmer did not speak French.
There's also some pretty odd ones from Mexico. People from Monterrey are called "regiomontanos", people from Mexico City are called "chilangos" or "defeños" and my absolute favorite is the name the name they give to people from Aguascalientes: "hidrocálidos".
Yaaaay, proud Janner here (actual Plymouth Janner too.) My dad was in the Navy, and I remember him telling me 'Janner' was naval-related, but it's good to hear the other origin story too.
I'm originally from Birmingham and when we'd be going to the city centre, we'd still say we're off to Brummagem. Not sure if that's common or just me and my mental family 😆 (Also, it's said with a soft g by the way). Oh, and when I was working on building sites, you'd often be asked to pass the 'Brummie screwdriver", meaning the hammer!
Brazil is full of weird denonyms. Examples: - Rio de Janeiro: Carioca - Salvador: Soteropolitano - Rio Grande do Sul: Gaúcho - Espírito Santo: Capixaba - Rio Grande do Norte: Potiguar
@@CAMacKenzie Gaúcho with the accent (gah-OO-shoo), in Portuguese, refers to any person from the state Rio Grande do Sul, even urban dwellers. Gaucho without the accent (GOW-tcho), in Spanish, refers to countryside people in Argentina and Uruguay.
@@stevelang2416 Thanks - sounds very plausible! I'm still a little wary as I've _never_ heard George as earth worker before (or even [a] George as meaning _anything_ [b] "earth worker" at all). But I agree it _sounds_ plausible. (Also, isn't Ge=Earth more Earth, the planet, rather than earth, soil?)
Thanks for a top class video. A couple of points. The “g” in Brummagem is pronounced soft like the”j” in jar. I have read that Brummagem is not thought to be a corruption of Birmingham but a perfectly regular parallel development from the Old English - compare the equally valid pronunciations of Shrewsbury as Shroosbury and Shrowsbury. While we are on the subject of language I should mention that though my original Brummie speech is probably a little diluted I expect that my pronunciation of the diphthongs ou and ie appears eccentric. Most of us have some sort of accent other than pure RP and I was interested in yours. I noticed that you have the London traits of an occasional glottal stop and - always - the pronunciation of th as an f eg Plymouf instead of Plymouth. Additionally you seem to pronounce final ls as ws - eg “people” as “peopuw” - and regularly placed a heavy stress on the last consonant of a sentence, no doubt for clarity. I wonder what sort of a (slight) accent that is. Anyway, interesting .
I didn't know about some of them, thank you! We have the same thing here in Italy, where someone from Milan could be called a Meneghino, Naples = Partenopeo, Verona = Scaligero and so on 🙂
In Portugal we have some cases like that, for example: People from Chaves are called Flaviense, due to the Roman name of the city Aquae Flavia; People from Santarém are escalabitano, from the Roman name Scalabis; Also in the Roman name thing we have the city of Guarda, then called Egitania, so, the people are egitanienses. And the last one I can remember is the city of Castelo Branco ( White Castle in english) so the people are called Albi ( White) Castrenses ( Castle)
Those names that started as derogatory might be what we call a "geuzennaam" in Dutch: a name that starts derogatory but is picked up and worn by its referrents with pride. Etymology: When the Spanish ruled over The Netherlands, the Dutch wrote a letter to Brussels to plea their independence, upon which the recipient referred to them as "gueux" ("beggers"), which got picked up and bastardized to "geus" in Dutch, with a new meaning: "fighter for the Dutch revolt" Another, more recent "geuzennaam" is "wap(pie)". This refers to a person who falls for conspiracy theories (especially since CoViD) and is an insult, but some "wappies" have started to wear the term with pride: "If thinking this makes me a 'wappie', then fine, I'm a 'wappie'!"
I'm from New Zealand, often known as Kiwis, from Auckland, our largest city, we are called "Jaffas", or Dorklanders by those who live outside of Auckland.
Was excited to hear the history of Mancunians as one myself, but another interesting one I've heard is that the people from Lincoln are referred to as Yellowbellies; if you do a follow-up please look into these two
In some areas of the Pas-deCalais region in France, people are called "Boyaux Rouges" which translates to "red bowels". I don't know if it has anything to do with excessive beer and juniper liquor consumption. Also there's a small town near where I live where the people are nickamed "maqueux d'oreilles" which is dialectic norman french for "ear-eaters", I've never known the reason.
I have some more to add to the North East! If you follow the coast from the Geordies and Mackems down, you'll hit Hartlepool where they're called Monkey Hangers. This is because in early 17th century they hung a monkey believing it to be a Napoleonic spy. Follow that further down and you'll hit the best place in the world- Middlesbrough. People from Middlesbrough are called Smoggies because the town used to be majorly industrialised and it created a lot of smog. If you keep going down the coast to the fishing villages south of Redcar, you'll find people being referred to as "Cod Heads" because a significant part of the historic fishing load was Cod.
To clarify about Sunderland; the term comes from "Takkers and Makkers", which was current at least in the 1970s. Takers and makers alluded to the pits (of which there were several) the shipyards and the glassworks (Famously Pyrex). Also there was the "We makkem, yea takkem due to the limestone ridge across the river mouth that made it rather difficult to get the buggers back.
Im from near a small town in East Anglia called Stowmarket. Some people from there where refured to as "Stow Martians" though weather that stuck, I dont know.
Yes, I thought that was odd. George (Geordie is common local form of George) _Stevenson_ was a local, though, and definitely much involved with many aspects of engineering, nationwide but definitely in the area too. (Most famous in developments of steam engines and railways, though I think he did a lot else too.)
I live in Plymouth and this is true. We are so different from the rest of Devon, more similar to some towns across the river. Our accent is different from Cornish and Devonian.
Does every town not also have a demonym? My family is from Dover (UK) and I’d always know the demonym to be Dovorian. Then in Kent you’ve also got the Man of Kent vs Kentish Man distinction (“Maid” in place of “Man” if you are woman), depending on which side of the Medway you are born. Not sure the latter is really a demonym, but applies to all people born in a certain geographic area and allegedly has either Anglo Saxon or Norman origins
In the Netherlands some towns have different names during our carnival, like Heemskerk where I've been born is called "Ezelenheem", so I'm an "Ezel" and yup, that's Donkey 😂 Amsterdam is Mokum so Mokumers, butnot for Carnival. A whole list is here, and there are more besides these, outside of the Carnival season: nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_alternatieve_Nederlandse_plaatsnamen_tijdens_carnaval
People from Pittsburgh in the USA are known as Yinzers. It's derived from the local word for You, singular or plural. "Are yinz goin' Dahntahn?" Meaning Are you going downtown?
I'm sure people from outside of Wales call Welsh people Taffy or Taff. Probably because Cardiff, the capital sits on the river Taff. In Wales we have a few, southern Walians call north Walians Gog, which is shortened from the Welsh word Gogledd which means north. North Walians call South Walians Hwntw, which is supposed to come from a word that means beyond in Welsh.. People from Llanelli are called Turks. And people from Swansea are called Jack's.
@@alynwillams4297 yeah same. Its more of a derogatory word. I used to live in the Amman valley, now in Dulais. Not that I expect anyone from outside of Wales to know the difference
Actually, I believe it depends on which side of the Medway: if on the London side, they're (a bit) Kent_ish_ , but the other side are "of Kent". Probably apocryphal tale from Terry Wogan: someone having been cut up (driving term) by someone else said "you Kentish twit!", to which he replied "if you please, sir - twit of Kent!"
I've only ever heard Brumigem pronounced with the 'g' sounding like a 'j': so it sounds like, Brummyjum. I've heard of Janners, but not 'Cousin Jan'. I know it as 'Cousin Jack', but that may be due to a folk song. I'm from the West Country so have been called a Wurzel, and a carrot-cruncher.
I'm from Wolverhampton and therefore Wulfrunian, due to our founder and Matron, Lady Wulfrun but other West Midlanders, especially Brummies call us Yamyams because apparently "Yam always gooing up the rowad or summat!" (also apparently the way we speak!")
re: Cockney "ey" used to be a legitimate word for egg in English as well. cf. with Dutch "ei" Actually, this almost perfectly parallels the John/Jan thing brought up right after regarding Plymouth
According to Wikipedia the denonym for Norwich is norvician. But there's no source cited and I've never heard anyone say that ever. Googling it also doesn't help much - it's a bit of a mystery
I'm from London and we don't consider Adele or David Beckham cockneys.. Adele isn't even from East London she's from Tottenham, that's North-East London.
Certainly not David much. More true Essexy. But Adele more so. Linda robson and Cathy Burke and from Islington. Linda often refers to herself as Cockney. Though just realised you said tottenham which is in harringey so bit more north granted. But It's also about where people spread to too. Eg the Essex accent being similar to cockney because of white flight and cockneys moving to the shires.
I'm a smoggie, Teesside's heavy industry gave the area a thick smog which football away fans used to insult us in the 90s. Me dad's a pit yacker and me mum comes from the clarish
Having been born in the UK over half a century ago i only knew about half of these and after reading the comments there's a vast number i never knew mostly from the North of England. Which is odd as a kid i watched lots of of UK tv shows based in the North of England. But seriously i've never met people who used these Demonyms or seen them in print or heard them on tv/radio/movies.
I'm from Johannesburg, so the city denonym is Johannesburger or Joburger (Joburg being a nickname). Interestingly, the word "burger" in it's original Dutch and German literally translates as "citizen".
From Burg, which is cognate with the English "borough" (though can mean castle in German). So a citizen of Hamburg is just a Hamburger (and the beef object is named after where it came from, and has nothing to do with pork).
My grandfather had the absolute thickest Cockney accent, I don’t think I honestly ever understood a single word he ever said. Oh and I doubt any Aussie he ever came across understood him either 😂 Also, never heard of the term Brummie 😂
I know the name "Brummie" (well "Brummi") for something completely different and a complete other etymology. A "Brummi" in Germany is a name you could give to a big truck. And the etymology is very simple, as the sound of a cars engine is called "brummen". So, a "Brummi" is just a car with a loud engine.
@@FoggyD It wasn't my thought of delegitimate something. I just talked about an interesting coincidence. I don't think, that Birmingham is the source of the german Brummi.
I live a bout 40 miles North of Birmingham Alabama all my life and I have never heard of anyone from there as any name . We just say “That guy is from Birmingham “ I don’t know if you know. But the suburbs also share names with British counterpart.
I'm from a certain part of Scotland and we are sometimes referred to in the same way as you implied Welsh people are lol mind you we are also sometimes called "teuchters" meaning people from the country (although since I've lived in the city for a long time now that doesn't apply so much as the 'sheep' one haha". The UK can be weird 😂
They use "Oxonian". (I don't think Cappies would work, as it could be confused with flat caps. Though the cartoon character has long disappeared, the north-east is still sometimes referred to as "Andy Capp country".)
Hullensian from Hull but we get called Cod heads due to the massive fishing industry we had. A hullensian would never call themselves cod head and instead use it for people from Grimbsy just down the river from Hull
Thx for an interesting video. It introduced Janners and Mackems to me, and explained Geordie. My grandfather's family hailed from Caernarfon, and its natives are called Cofis. Why? My cousin lives in Indiana, and regards himself as Hoosier. From where does that nickname derive?
I live in Somerville, Massachusetts; one of our demonyms is "Villens", more often used by people whose families have lived here for a long time. I'm more fond of "Somervudlians", obviously a cheeky nod to "Liverpudlians". Meanwhile, since "Massachusetts" doesn't exactly lend itself to conventional suffixes, we semi-officially get stuck with the rather clunky "Bay Staters", but a far more commonly used term is "Massholes", mostly by people from other states. :-) Oh, and people from Cambridge, immediately south of us, do cheerfully call themselves "Cantabridgians".
You might want to ease of on the Villens, as villein - with an extra i - was roughly synonymous with serf in mediæval English, i. e. someone low-born who owned no land and was thus beholden to the local landowner/lord/whatever. And villain, of course!
My Mum, who was a cockney said it came from the Huguenots…now this gets complicated…a lot of the Londoners had crooked noses - not sure if it was a south east Anglo Saxon thing or what but ‘cock ney’ came from cock nez ( cock for crocked French for nose). Like how cliche cockneys carry a songbird in a cage (something else the French Huguenots brought with them along with all the mulberry trees scattered across London from when they were silk farmers).
You need to do a little more research on some of these. Cockney is either a derivation of Cockaigne - a mythical kingdom of liberty and licentiousness - or from "cock an eye" which was (is?) a very widespread habit there for recognising other insiders and "cocky" is a related word - it doesnt mean "useless". "Janner" is a derivation of "Jane" which is a common term for matelots - Plymouth being a major port. More important though, there are dozens you've missed out, for example Tykes (for South Yorkshire people), Boggers (Nottingham), Yonners (Lancashire), Yammies (Black Country), Monkeyhangers (Hartlepool/Teeside), Moonrakers (Dorset/Wiltshire), Taffs (west Wales), Gogs (north Wales), Muffins (south Devon)..... and I’d like to hear you explain the origin of Botherers (for Lancashire people).
9:33: If Newcastle (upon Tyne) is one of your favourite cities, you'd know it's not to be pronounced as if it had an R before the s! That's one of the (many!) other NewcaRstles. The Geordie one is "Newcassel, man!" 🙂
I’m from Bradford, our demonym is the unimaginative Bradfordian. I feel like if we were to have our own then one referencing our historic wool trade would fit.
Not my city but people who work at or attend renaissance festival a lot are called "rennies", and those who work at circuses and carnivals "Carnies" (as in the saying, "not my circus not my carnies")
@@G6JPG lol yeah thats why i said not city. Though, Kind of a demonyms because both carnies and rennies travel with and live wherever their current faire or carnival is!
What are people from your city known as?
Meenzer (German city of Mainz) 😎
Sturgeons... (Steuren)
People from Shropshire go by their latin the name “Salopian”
Edmondite
Burqueños (Albuquerque)
I’ve never heard a single soul refer to Birmingham as “beloved on the world stage”
Nor me but if they knew Brummies better they would.
Used to live in Birmingham and go to metal gigs. The touring American bands used to always say how much they owed Brum.
Peaky Blinders has been great PR for the city apparently lol
@@nicholasmarsh5567No they wouldn't
Well seems you need to get out and about a bit, your friends circle is way too small, I've heard many positivities about Brummagem, but maybe that's cus I'm well travelled and have a circle of friends bigger than I can really handle.
Wierdest demonym was what we locals called people in our tiny town in tunisia, Dehiba, which we'd call ourselves "Min Anakin" (meaning "of anakin") as an adjective. Reason being, Dehiba is in the Tataouine Governorate of tunisia, so we made a pun in the 1990s in reference to the planet the star wars character Anakin was born on
I wouldn't be surprised if this was exactly how Lucas chose those names.
I knew a lot of Star Wars was filmed around there; I didn't know Tat(a)ouine was a real place/district name though!
@@G6JPG It's one of our biggest cities haha. But I lived really rurally when I lived there. Now I'm studying in Germany, but plan to go back when I'm done. It's hot as fuck, but our tiny town is super sweet and very multiethnic, with a lot of Tunisians, but also loads of libyans, tuaregs, and sometimed Bedouins even stop there for a few months :)
Surely the best derogatory name that's been embraced by the locals are the "Monkey-Hangers" of Hartlepool?
Doesn't offend me in the slightest; it just lets me know if outsiders have heard of the legend. We refer to each other as Poolies.
I met someone from Hartlepool this past weekend and I immediately went "aah monkeys!"
They laughed and we carried on
Funny etymology that one.
Well at least they got that right, if it's hanged it can't be hung (assuming you know the difference)
If you get an ice cream in hartlepool, they dont offer you strawberry sauce they ask if you want monkey blood.
I'm a Mackem, born in Sunderland, which is where my dad is from, but I'm also half Sand Dancer - the denonym for the nearby South Shields.
sanddancer mentioned!!!!!
Why say this on the Internet you 🤡
You're a Plastic to me.
Sand Dancer!? Ha, that's a new one on me! What about the people from North Shields?
@@tomthornton6259 I've heard "fish nabbers" and "cod heads" (where heads would be pronounced as heeds of course.) North Shields is still an active fishing port.
I’m a Geordie. A lot of years ago I worked with the British Army in the extreme south of England. Those rascally squaddies called all northeners “ganyams”. When I asked why, I was told that it all depends on homesickness and weekend leave. “It’s Friday and I’m gannin hyem”. (It’s Friday and I’m going home)
There's something interesting to be said about how the great vowel shift is less and less impactful the further north you go and people in the north seem to speak closer to old English, not only in pronunciation but in vocabulary with words like haem in Scotland and bairn
@@RNS_Aurelius Geordie haem is pronounced yem
In the army, Black Country people are sometimes called "Yam Yams". "Yam" in Black Country speak = "Y'am" = "You am", which elsewhere is said "You are".
"Wim" = "We am" = "We are".
"Them" = "They am" = "They are".
@@ianallan8005 Hyem, and Hame different words entirely, and both can be found in Northumberland, with Hame being popular in the North, and Hyem being popular in the South.
I like how Nottingham apparently comes from a local king Snot and everybody collectively decided to forget that and people from Nottingham are not called Snots
What are they called?
Adele a cockney? Your havin a bubble bath Ge
Never proved. May be an urban myth. A nearby village Sneinton may or may not have that origin but that's suspect too. Nottingham people are called "duckies" or " boggers".
I thought the nickname for people from Nottingham was "scabs?" 😏
@@akoot Now now, behave yourself. Those days are behind us.
Wiltshiremen are referred to as 'Moonrakers' from a smuggler story that shows them in good (moon)light
And apparently the story is true, told to excise men when they were almost caught one night trying to retrieve smuggled brandy hidden in a lake. They got away with it too.
I'm near a Manchester in the US, I was a bit surprised to see that the demonym is Mancunian. It comes from an older Latin word, Mancunium, of uncertain etymology, from the city's Roman days (in 79 AD).
The etymology of Manchester derives from the latinised version of the pre-roman name "Mamcucium" - The "Chester" part relates to a place where the romans built a fort.
Do you guys not call yourselves Mancunians in the American version of Manchester?
For short the people are called “Manc/ Manc’s” throughout all of England. Altho I heard a scouser call em a “Manny” (they are suppose to not get along in a similar sense to NYers n Jerseyers)
You have accidentally overlooked that people in Birmingham and the surrounding area call Birmingham "Brum". It hasn't fallen out of use. Brummie is a person from Brum... It isn't much of a leap given the abbreviated form of the old name for the town / city hasn't fallen out of use.
Yamyam
Yam yams are people from the black country north of Birmingham. Walsall and Wolverhampton Dudley and West Bromwich the biggest town and cities.
Brummies and yam yams don't like being muddled up
Dudley W.Brom and Wolverhampton are Brummies idgaf what they say😂@@patrickgiordan5483
Yes. I'm a 65 year old Australian. Brumby is a word my father used. He was born in a remote rural area of Victoria in 1903.
"You all know what a demonyn is, right?"
Uh, yeah. It's what you call an evil mystical entity, innit?
demonym with an m
Sheffielders are called Deedars by other Tykes (Yorkshire people) because instead of saying "thee and thou" we said "dee and daa".
you've just blown my mind, I'm from Doncaster and I've met people who say Dee and Daa and never understood why.
My American friends online always find it funny when an occasional "thee" pops out
@@the98themperoroftheholybri33
Worst bit about Donny is how your new manager bounce has blown Danny Rohl out the water
@@stalfithrildi5366 I don't know what you're talking about, I assume that's football?
Or Liverpool: "Dee doo doh, don't dey doh?" (They do, though, don't they though)...
Micky mousers are also called la laas. Amongst some other names I won't mention here
Wools are from wirral, the peninsula dividing Liverpool from Wales, surrounded by the mersey and dee.
Wools are also from Wigan, St. Helens, Warrington. Basically anybody who isn't Scouse! Source: my Dad's family are from Liverpool and my Mum's family is from Wigan !
@@Mmjk_12 I always wonder how many people I see on the streets who watch the same content creators as me. Wouldn't that be fun to know
Also living in Plymouth, I think the Janner name is more about the accent. A regional Devonian accent (farmer accent closer to a Somerset or Bristolian accent) and Plymouth accent (Jannarrrr) do sound different. Different again to a Cornish accent as well. One thing that unites them all is overpronouncing Rs.
As someone who is interested in traditional accents and dialects, it would be great if you could explain what the differences are. West Country accents are some of my favourites.
Plymothian here, best way I describe it, would be, Janners drop the T and emphasise er in words,
Plymothian will pronounce the T and not emphasise the er in words
I grew up around Totnes and never knew people from Plymouth were known as Janners. I would seldom hear the word and never enquired as to what it meant. A strong westcountry accent in Plymouth though. I always found it strange that the most yokel, bumpkin accents are often found in the citys of Plymouth and Bristol. I was at a friends place in Totnes once when she was raided by police. There was someone loudly knocking on the door and as soon as i heard their accents i knew who it was - Plymouth DS. I think the Bristol and Plymouth accents are similar but Bristol being a little softer. Cornish a bit more nasal and twangy if you know what i mean.
@@MrOoYT Janners can make a real meal of the 'or' sound in words. Devon accent for 'door,' 'floor,' and 'more,' would be 'dorrrrr,' 'florrr, and 'morrrre' - while Janner would be closer to 'doo-er,' 'floo-er,' and 'moo-er.' Our 'oh' sounds tend to be a bit more on the 'posh-sounding' side as well... I did try to think about how that could be written phonetically, but damn is it ever hard! Literally just imagine a small child saying "oh" in a Downton Abbey accent, and that's pretty close to how a Janner would say it. 😊
Oh - except my son has just reminded me that I tend to pronounce 'oh' sounds at the END of words as 'er' - as in "win-der" and "foll-er" for "window" and "follow." And l's/double l's at the ends of words as w's - i.e. 'shall,' wheel,' and 'all' as "sha-uw," "whee-uw," and "aww."
I mean, it's all true, but reading this back I can't help feeling like I must sound like a proper knuckle-dragger every time I open my mouth...!
@@Maerahn ahh so it’s like Bristol, a scary concoction of city people speaking country
Love how your photo of Newcastle shows more of Gateshead than it does Newcastle.
Ones from around the north east include Sanddancer for South Shields and Smoggie for Teesside
Don’t forget the Pit Yakkers from Ashington
I’m from Middlesbrough and I am frequently mistaken for a Geordie!
Brummagem - the G is pronounced like J!
Smoggie started because of football, Sunderland supporters made it up due to the heavy air pollution in the city.
I'm from Groningen in the Netherlands and we are called Mollebonen.
Worth noting that the egg part of the possible "cockney" origin story is because the Middle English word was ey. Which is funny because the Old English word was ǣg, we lost the G and then found it again later
Interesting! In German, it's "ei", pronounced essentially like "eye". So it seems like we gained a G, then lost it, then got it.
@@sharonminsuk Gdamn it, cockneys aint named after cocks eggs. Why would that ever be true?
The Old English “g” was not always pronounced as in the hard closed “gg” in the modern word “egg.” Position your throat as if to say the g, but don’t close off your throat as you pronounce it. It sounds to our ears like the “y” sound we have now and it was sometimes transliterated with “y” or “g”.
Think the two were used concurrently until printers fixed the hard g sound. I remember reading about a group of medieval travellers who were hungry and stopped at a farmstead to ask for food but asked for eggs rather than ei, only to be told that the farmer did not speak French.
I never heard of the stew "lobscouse", but I know the northern german version "Labskaus". I didn't know it existed in Scandinavia as well.
Lapskaus. Meat, potato & root vegetable stew
There's also some pretty odd ones from Mexico. People from Monterrey are called "regiomontanos", people from Mexico City are called "chilangos" or "defeños" and my absolute favorite is the name the name they give to people from Aguascalientes: "hidrocálidos".
I would say that only Mexico city has odd ones. Regiomontano makes sense since "regio" means "royal" y "montano" is "from the montano"
My favorite is that people from Guadalajara are called Tapatios.
Yaaaay, proud Janner here (actual Plymouth Janner too.) My dad was in the Navy, and I remember him telling me 'Janner' was naval-related, but it's good to hear the other origin story too.
I'm originally from Birmingham and when we'd be going to the city centre, we'd still say we're off to Brummagem. Not sure if that's common or just me and my mental family 😆 (Also, it's said with a soft g by the way). Oh, and when I was working on building sites, you'd often be asked to pass the 'Brummie screwdriver", meaning the hammer!
This is a perfect video to, once and for all, state that no my username has no relation to Mackem. It's just a coincidence
You should take pride in your Sunderland heritage.
0:30 "why have i made that sound way more complicated than it needed to be"
linguistics in a nutshell
I'm from Macclesfield, and we're called Maxonians.
Brazil is full of weird denonyms. Examples:
- Rio de Janeiro: Carioca
- Salvador: Soteropolitano
- Rio Grande do Sul: Gaúcho
- Espírito Santo: Capixaba
- Rio Grande do Norte: Potiguar
I thought Gaucho was an Argentine cowboy.
@@CAMacKenzie Gaúcho with the accent (gah-OO-shoo), in Portuguese, refers to any person from the state Rio Grande do Sul, even urban dwellers. Gaucho without the accent (GOW-tcho), in Spanish, refers to countryside people in Argentina and Uruguay.
Another you missed is Loiner for those from Leeds.
George means earth worker. I guess it's possible for Geordie to be used for coal miners.
In what language/dialect does it mean earth worker? (I'm not saying you're wrong, only that I haven't heard it before.)
@@G6JPG It comes from Greek, 'Ge' is earth (like in geography) and 'ergon' is work.
@@stevelang2416 Thanks - sounds very plausible! I'm still a little wary as I've _never_ heard George as earth worker before (or even [a] George as meaning _anything_ [b] "earth worker" at all). But I agree it _sounds_ plausible.
(Also, isn't Ge=Earth more Earth, the planet, rather than earth, soil?)
Thanks for a top class video. A couple of points. The “g” in Brummagem is pronounced soft like the”j” in jar. I have read that Brummagem is not thought to be a corruption of Birmingham but a perfectly regular parallel development from the Old English - compare the equally valid pronunciations of Shrewsbury as Shroosbury and Shrowsbury. While we are on the subject of language I should mention that though my original Brummie speech is probably a little diluted I expect that my pronunciation of the diphthongs ou and ie appears eccentric. Most of us have some sort of accent other than pure RP and I was interested in yours. I noticed that you have the London traits of an occasional glottal stop and - always - the pronunciation of th as an f eg Plymouf instead of Plymouth. Additionally you seem to pronounce final ls as ws - eg “people” as “peopuw” - and regularly placed a heavy stress on the last consonant of a sentence, no doubt for clarity. I wonder what sort of a (slight) accent that is. Anyway, interesting
.
Suvverner... vey tal' like vat... Peepoo fwom ve sahf...
I didn't know about some of them, thank you!
We have the same thing here in Italy, where someone from Milan could be called a Meneghino, Naples = Partenopeo, Verona = Scaligero and so on 🙂
Coming from Birmingham, AL, I have literally never heard of the name Brummie even though I even know someone from Birmingham, England
Jeff Lynne is another great Brummie celebrated all over the world. LA, New York, Amsterdam, Monte Carlo, SHARD END.
In Portugal we have some cases like that, for example:
People from Chaves are called Flaviense, due to the Roman name of the city Aquae Flavia;
People from Santarém are escalabitano, from the Roman name Scalabis;
Also in the Roman name thing we have the city of Guarda, then called Egitania, so, the people are egitanienses.
And the last one I can remember is the city of Castelo Branco ( White Castle in english) so the people are called Albi ( White) Castrenses ( Castle)
As any Wulfrunian or Salopian will tell you, Brummagem is pronounced "Brummijum". Usage includes knocking screws into wood.
Those names that started as derogatory might be what we call a "geuzennaam" in Dutch: a name that starts derogatory but is picked up and worn by its referrents with pride.
Etymology: When the Spanish ruled over The Netherlands, the Dutch wrote a letter to Brussels to plea their independence, upon which the recipient referred to them as "gueux" ("beggers"), which got picked up and bastardized to "geus" in Dutch, with a new meaning: "fighter for the Dutch revolt"
Another, more recent "geuzennaam" is "wap(pie)". This refers to a person who falls for conspiracy theories (especially since CoViD) and is an insult, but some "wappies" have started to wear the term with pride: "If thinking this makes me a 'wappie', then fine, I'm a 'wappie'!"
I loved that you used a picture of richard hammond with oliver!
The demonym for someone from Birmingham, Alabama could be " 'Bama Brummie", perhaps. 😂
Beat me to it. Glad I scrolled.
I'm from New Zealand, often known as Kiwis, from Auckland, our largest city, we are called "Jaffas", or Dorklanders by those who live outside of Auckland.
I'll add to this. Auckland contains about 75% of the NZ population. JAFA stands for "Just Another *Effing* Aucklander"
@@mickbull7547 Auckland population circa 1.7 million, NZ population circa 5 million
Was excited to hear the history of Mancunians as one myself, but another interesting one I've heard is that the people from Lincoln are referred to as Yellowbellies; if you do a follow-up please look into these two
In some areas of the Pas-deCalais region in France, people are called "Boyaux Rouges" which translates to "red bowels". I don't know if it has anything to do with excessive beer and juniper liquor consumption.
Also there's a small town near where I live where the people are nickamed "maqueux d'oreilles" which is dialectic norman french for "ear-eaters", I've never known the reason.
I have some more to add to the North East! If you follow the coast from the Geordies and Mackems down, you'll hit Hartlepool where they're called Monkey Hangers. This is because in early 17th century they hung a monkey believing it to be a Napoleonic spy. Follow that further down and you'll hit the best place in the world- Middlesbrough. People from Middlesbrough are called Smoggies because the town used to be majorly industrialised and it created a lot of smog. If you keep going down the coast to the fishing villages south of Redcar, you'll find people being referred to as "Cod Heads" because a significant part of the historic fishing load was Cod.
I believe Cornishman Sir Humphry Davy invented the miners safety lamp!
Sir Humphry Davy invented a miners safety lamp. There were more than one. William Reid Clanny invented one too.
To clarify about Sunderland; the term comes from "Takkers and Makkers", which was current at least in the 1970s. Takers and makers alluded to the pits (of which there were several) the shipyards and the glassworks (Famously Pyrex). Also there was the "We makkem, yea takkem due to the limestone ridge across the river mouth that made it rather difficult to get the buggers back.
Im from near a small town in East Anglia called Stowmarket. Some people from there where refured to as "Stow Martians" though weather that stuck, I dont know.
the miners' lamp was invented by Humphrey Davy for the Cornish tin mines.
Yes, I thought that was odd. George (Geordie is common local form of George) _Stevenson_ was a local, though, and definitely much involved with many aspects of engineering, nationwide but definitely in the area too. (Most famous in developments of steam engines and railways, though I think he did a lot else too.)
Ahem, you neglected to name-check history's finest Brummie: Nigel Mansell's moustache...
I live in a small town a few miles from Plymouth and the word janner is exclusively used for people from Plymouth
I live in Plymouth and this is true. We are so different from the rest of Devon, more similar to some towns across the river. Our accent is different from Cornish and Devonian.
My Dad (Ex RN & Scottish) Called Everyone down here JAN!
Does every town not also have a demonym? My family is from Dover (UK) and I’d always know the demonym to be Dovorian.
Then in Kent you’ve also got the Man of Kent vs Kentish Man distinction (“Maid” in place of “Man” if you are woman), depending on which side of the Medway you are born.
Not sure the latter is really a demonym, but applies to all people born in a certain geographic area and allegedly has either Anglo Saxon or Norman origins
Mush/musher for someone from Portsmouth. They are sometimes also called "skates" too...
In the Netherlands some towns have different names during our carnival, like Heemskerk where I've been born is called "Ezelenheem", so I'm an "Ezel" and yup, that's Donkey 😂
Amsterdam is Mokum so Mokumers, butnot for Carnival.
A whole list is here, and there are more besides these, outside of the Carnival season:
nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_alternatieve_Nederlandse_plaatsnamen_tijdens_carnaval
Pac gets a mention. nice! Also, what about South Shields, they have Sandancer as their demonym
People from Pittsburgh in the USA are known as Yinzers. It's derived from the local word for You, singular or plural. "Are yinz goin' Dahntahn?" Meaning Are you going downtown?
I thought they were called sheetz ;)
There is no way people genuinely didnt know that cockrels dont lay eggs
I'm sure people from outside of Wales call Welsh people Taffy or Taff. Probably because Cardiff, the capital sits on the river Taff.
In Wales we have a few, southern Walians call north Walians Gog, which is shortened from the Welsh word Gogledd which means north. North Walians call South Walians Hwntw, which is supposed to come from a word that means beyond in Welsh.. People from Llanelli are called Turks. And people from Swansea are called Jack's.
Always grates me being called taff especially since im from north wales. I’m closer to the river Dee than the bloody taff
@@alynwillams4297 yeah same. Its more of a derogatory word. I used to live in the Amman valley, now in Dulais. Not that I expect anyone from outside of Wales to know the difference
People from Kent are just known as Kentish atm but I think we could call ourselves "Catties" - cattie from cathedral, as in Canterbury Cathedral
Also I could be a Cat-boy lmao
As a southender, I just consider everyone south of the estuary a frenchie
Actually, I believe it depends on which side of the Medway: if on the London side, they're (a bit) Kent_ish_ , but the other side are "of Kent". Probably apocryphal tale from Terry Wogan: someone having been cut up (driving term) by someone else said "you Kentish twit!", to which he replied "if you please, sir - twit of Kent!"
I've only ever heard Brumigem pronounced with the 'g' sounding like a 'j': so it sounds like, Brummyjum. I've heard of Janners, but not 'Cousin Jan'. I know it as 'Cousin Jack', but that may be due to a folk song. I'm from the West Country so have been called a Wurzel, and a carrot-cruncher.
Yeah, it's Cousin Jack and Cousin Jenny, not Jan.
I'm from Wolverhampton and therefore Wulfrunian, due to our founder and Matron, Lady Wulfrun but other West Midlanders, especially Brummies call us Yamyams because apparently "Yam always gooing up the rowad or summat!" (also apparently the way we speak!")
I'm a Grecian, and we generally use janner as a derogatory term
That is because you are shiite horses!
The biggest town in my area is called Ashford, but lots of people refer to it as Trashford, not quite the same but still funny imo 😂
re: Cockney "ey" used to be a legitimate word for egg in English as well. cf. with Dutch "ei"
Actually, this almost perfectly parallels the John/Jan thing brought up right after regarding Plymouth
According to Wikipedia the denonym for Norwich is norvician. But there's no source cited and I've never heard anyone say that ever. Googling it also doesn't help much - it's a bit of a mystery
I'm from London and we don't consider Adele or David Beckham cockneys.. Adele isn't even from East London she's from Tottenham, that's North-East London.
Certainly not David much. More true Essexy. But Adele more so. Linda robson and Cathy Burke and from Islington. Linda often refers to herself as Cockney. Though just realised you said tottenham which is in harringey so bit more north granted. But It's also about where people spread to too. Eg the Essex accent being similar to cockney because of white flight and cockneys moving to the shires.
in the state of NSW in australia, someone is called a "New South Welshman"
Or “Cockroaches “
New south sheep sha... Never mind 😅
In Dorset, anyone who is *not* from Dorset is called a Grockle, especially if they're here on holiday.
Same in Devon & Cornwall, also sometimes Emmit!
Like the invented term for non-magicians in the Harry Potter books; probably where it came from.
I'm a smoggie, Teesside's heavy industry gave the area a thick smog which football away fans used to insult us in the 90s. Me dad's a pit yacker and me mum comes from the clarish
Something similar happens within my region, where people from certain towns and cities receive weird demonyms, often derogatory in origin.
I'm Geordie but I'll mention my local brethren from Middlesborough called "Smoggies" ;)
Having been born in the UK over half a century ago i only knew about half of these and after reading the comments there's a vast number i never knew mostly from the North of England. Which is odd as a kid i watched lots of of UK tv shows based in the North of England.
But seriously i've never met people who used these Demonyms or seen them in print or heard them on tv/radio/movies.
In our youth, the terms may have been filtered by the TV companies. Certainly Geordie, Mackem, Brummie, Scouser, and Cockney are still in wide use.
I'm from Johannesburg, so the city denonym is Johannesburger or Joburger (Joburg being a nickname). Interestingly, the word "burger" in it's original Dutch and German literally translates as "citizen".
From Burg, which is cognate with the English "borough" (though can mean castle in German). So a citizen of Hamburg is just a Hamburger (and the beef object is named after where it came from, and has nothing to do with pork).
during a discussion for our music group, we ended up calling people from our village "madeleines"
My grandfather had the absolute thickest Cockney accent, I don’t think I honestly ever understood a single word he ever said. Oh and I doubt any Aussie he ever came across understood him either 😂
Also, never heard of the term Brummie 😂
The town of nantwich has the demonym "dabber" which i think comes from the towns history of leather or salt trade but i am not sure
Names famous Scousers but not the four most famous ones in the world.
I don’t know why but I find it hilarious that Bede and jordon Pickford where mentioned in the same sentence
I know the name "Brummie" (well "Brummi") for something completely different and a complete other etymology. A "Brummi" in Germany is a name you could give to a big truck. And the etymology is very simple, as the sound of a cars engine is called "brummen". So, a "Brummi" is just a car with a loud engine.
"Brum" can be the sound a car makes here too - but the city of course predates the invention of the automobile.
@@FoggyD
It wasn't my thought of delegitimate something. I just talked about an interesting coincidence. I don't think, that Birmingham is the source of the german Brummi.
@@HalfEye79 I was just expanding on the point. Not sure why you'd take that as an accusation of trying to delegitimise the nickname for Birmingham??
🤣🤣
I live a bout 40 miles North of Birmingham Alabama all my life and I have never heard of anyone from there as any name . We just say “That guy is from Birmingham “ I don’t know if you know. But the suburbs also share names with British counterpart.
I'm from a certain part of Scotland and we are sometimes referred to in the same way as you implied Welsh people are lol mind you we are also sometimes called "teuchters" meaning people from the country (although since I've lived in the city for a long time now that doesn't apply so much as the 'sheep' one haha". The UK can be weird 😂
I think someone from Oxford should be known as "Cappies" (for the mortarboards worn during university celebrations).
They use "Oxonian". (I don't think Cappies would work, as it could be confused with flat caps. Though the cartoon character has long disappeared, the north-east is still sometimes referred to as "Andy Capp country".)
I’m from Gloucester Massachusetts, and we have been referred to as Gloucesterites. Is this the same with the original Gloucester?
I'm from the original Gloucester! We're Gloucestestrians - the term doesn't get used all that much these days though.
Missed a lot here. I can see why you skipped us Mancs as its pretty obvious. I'm suprised smoggy and yamyam didn't make it
I thought the most famous Geordie ever was ITV's Vera.
🙂And Brenda Blethyn isn't even Geordie! But she's got it perfectly, hasn't she.
Hullensian from Hull but we get called Cod heads due to the massive fishing industry we had. A hullensian would never call themselves cod head and instead use it for people from Grimbsy just down the river from Hull
Up the river.
Thx for an interesting video. It introduced Janners and Mackems to me, and explained Geordie. My grandfather's family hailed from Caernarfon, and its natives are called Cofis. Why? My cousin lives in Indiana, and regards himself as Hoosier. From where does that nickname derive?
Probably NOT "What's yer name? Hoosier daddy? Is he rich like me?"
Cofis? Probably from Afon Cothi, a river I used to fish in Carmarthenshire for Sewin (Sea Trout).
Leeds have Loiner or Leodensian, which are pretty cool. Epecially Leodenisian, feels quite Roman
I live in Somerville, Massachusetts; one of our demonyms is "Villens", more often used by people whose families have lived here for a long time. I'm more fond of "Somervudlians", obviously a cheeky nod to "Liverpudlians". Meanwhile, since "Massachusetts" doesn't exactly lend itself to conventional suffixes, we semi-officially get stuck with the rather clunky "Bay Staters", but a far more commonly used term is "Massholes", mostly by people from other states. :-)
Oh, and people from Cambridge, immediately south of us, do cheerfully call themselves "Cantabridgians".
You might want to ease of on the Villens, as villein - with an extra i - was roughly synonymous with serf in mediæval English, i. e. someone low-born who owned no land and was thus beholden to the local landowner/lord/whatever. And villain, of course!
My Mum, who was a cockney said it came from the Huguenots…now this gets complicated…a lot of the Londoners had crooked noses - not sure if it was a south east Anglo Saxon thing or what but ‘cock ney’ came from cock nez ( cock for crocked French for nose). Like how cliche cockneys carry a songbird in a cage (something else the French Huguenots brought with them along with all the mulberry trees scattered across London from when they were silk farmers).
You need to do a little more research on some of these. Cockney is either a derivation of Cockaigne - a mythical kingdom of liberty and licentiousness - or from "cock an eye" which was (is?) a very widespread habit there for recognising other insiders and "cocky" is a related word - it doesnt mean "useless". "Janner" is a derivation of "Jane" which is a common term for matelots - Plymouth being a major port. More important though, there are dozens you've missed out, for example Tykes (for South Yorkshire people), Boggers (Nottingham), Yonners (Lancashire), Yammies (Black Country), Monkeyhangers (Hartlepool/Teeside), Moonrakers (Dorset/Wiltshire), Taffs (west Wales), Gogs (north Wales), Muffins (south Devon)..... and I’d like to hear you explain the origin of Botherers (for Lancashire people).
Missed opportunity not to mention Yam Yam as the demonym for someone from the Black Country
I Am, I Am 😂
In Ireland there's Jackeens vs Culchies. I don't know if anyone cares, but I can explain these if asked. As for me, I am a Yank/Yankee.
9:33: If Newcastle (upon Tyne) is one of your favourite cities, you'd know it's not to be pronounced as if it had an R before the s! That's one of the (many!) other NewcaRstles. The Geordie one is "Newcassel, man!" 🙂
Janner and proud and I can definitely say it's the city folk called this .... Everyone else is a Devonian
I'm a Janner too, but happy to accept Devon folk (Except Grecians!) 😂
Here in new england people like my self from Massachusetts are called mass holes. Which would include our Plymouth
Way back, some Leicester types were called woolybacks.
I’m from Bradford, our demonym is the unimaginative Bradfordian. I feel like if we were to have our own then one referencing our historic wool trade would fit.
Unofficially Bradistan.
I’m manc but someone up the road in Oldham is called a yonner
So do people from Newcastle just not have last names or
Reminds me of the debate as to whether people from the state of Michigan are called Michiganians or Michiganers
Michiganders?
Not my city but people who work at or attend renaissance festival a lot are called "rennies", and those who work at circuses and carnivals "Carnies" (as in the saying, "not my circus not my carnies")
Plenty of occupation-related terms! This video was about demonyms, though - place-related ones.
@@G6JPG lol yeah thats why i said not city. Though, Kind of a demonyms because both carnies and rennies travel with and live wherever their current faire or carnival is!
Can someone tell me, what the demonym for people from Southampton is. Would it be; Southamptonian, Southamptonite, or Southamptoner?