placename nomenclature [was Re: Attn: Spanish speakers]

Quoting Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>:

> On 30 Aug 02, at 22:09, Roberto Suarez Soto wrote:
>
> > gentilicians? (the names of the people that inhabit some place)
>
> "gentilics"? Not sure, though.
Missed this one.  Are we talking about a name for names of people,
or just the generic name of for people inhabiting a given place?
Neither "gentilicians" nor "gentilics" would be immediately meaningful
to me if I read or heard them used.

> (French is also interesting in that
> department, with lots and lots of places, even smaller ones, having
> special names for the inhabitants; whence e.g. "salade niçoise" from
> "Nice".)
Yeah, Britain can be like that too, although the only ones that
spring to mind ("Mancunian", "Liverpudlian", "Oxonian", etc.)
are relatively famous or big.  America is relative deficient,
besides the few oddities like "Michigander".  Although the modern
inhabitants of Texas are called Texans, they were not always so:
during the Republic, they were "Texians", and that is still the
appropriate adjective for people living in Texas between 1817
and 1845.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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