h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And Roumania gave us that phrase beloved of Estate Agents "It's very roomy, ain't it?"

If people from Poland are Poles, why aren't people from Holland Holes?

because there aren't enough Dutch boys to stick their thumbs in all of them

Because little Dutch boys traditionally put their fingers in holes.

Snap!

Dubliners come from Dublin and Londoners come from London. Why do we have Liverpudlians, Mancunians, Oxonian and Glaswegians? I suppose Manchesterer sounds bad, but Oxforder should be easy enough to say. Are there any other such names and how do they arise?

I always assumed that Liverpudlians was a sort of joke on the 'pool' bit. What do people who live in Hartlepool call themselves (apart from unfortunate)? Mancunian sounds like a cod Latin root. This is odd because the -chester bit is from the Roman for camp. Folk from Chester don't call themselves Cunians, do they? (My local Lincs village, from the same root, is Caistor. The one-thumbed inhabitants call themselves Caistorians)
I think there may be vaguely phonetic reasons - are there other towns with -n endings that don't form -ners?
I don't understand Glaswegians; logically I would expect Glasgovians. I have the feeling that all these things were made up to confuse the foreigners (again) in Victorian times

And maybe people from Iceland could be eye'oles?

This doesn't explain why people from Cork are called "Langers"
*I think that'll get past moderation..*

Gnomon, I hardly like to ask, but are you sure that Rumania, which is also spelt Romania, is allowed to be spelt 'Roumania'?

Yes. Roumania was a fairly normal spelling for the name in English up to fairly recently. English has its own spellings for the names of most countries: Italia is spelt I-T-A-L-Y, Deutschland is spelt G-E-R-M-A-N-Y and Romania was spelt R-O-U-M-A-N-I-A. Perhaps because the English spelling was so close to the Romanian spelling, we started using the country's own way of spelling it.

People from Chester are cestrians aren't they?

*cue for bad jokes* People from Milton Keynes?

Embarrassed.

If you have a Guide Michelin in French to hand, you will see that each town in France has its own (very often illogical) way of designating its inhabitants - it is a popular Trivial Pursuit trick among the French to pop in one of these questions.

I will look out some examples next time I pass our bookshelf and post them later. And, still on French, they actually do have the word "bougre" for - you know, what was mentioned above.

So, if people from Glasgow are Glaswegians (or even Wegies), those from Aberdeen are Aberdonians and those from Dundee are Dundonians what are people from Edinburgh, other than stuck up? I've always wanted to know. Bizarrely, being born in Paisley I can claim to be a Buddy. Eh?
Oh, and another thing, flammable, inflammable and imflammable. One of these is the opposite of the other two, but I can't remember how it works, and would love to know why.

There are four words:

inflammable - something which can be inflamed (set fire to)
non-inflammable - something which can't.

These were considered too confusing so a new word and its opposite were invented:

flammable - something which can be set fire to
non-flammable - something which can't.

Don't know about natives of Edinburgh. Doughty burghers or something.

Incidently people from Halifax on this side of the ocean are 'Haligonians' - is the same true for Halifax in England?

Beth

I think they're just Yorshiremen/women. But if not, I'd love to know what you'd call someone from Leeds.

Meanwhile back in Bulgaria ..
if they gave us buggers - [I vaguely remember from Linguistics 101 that Bs and Vs often get transposed] - can I also assume they gave us vulgar.

jwf - a rhapsodic bohemenian