You probably know a few state demonyms—the words you call people or things from a specific state—like “Pennsylvanian” or “Texan” or the entertaining “Michigander.” You might even know that Wikipedia keeps a list of semi-official state demonyms, plus alternate options. But did you know that state demonyms follow a regional pattern?
It turns out that states in the same region tend to have the same suffix in their demonym: the old South and the West Coast generally end an “-ian,” New England ends in “-er,” the West in “-an.” A few stray states use “-ite.” The regional patterns are revealed in this map from Twitter’s OnlMaps:
Tweet may have been deleted
These are just the demonyms recommended by the U.S. Government Publishing Office, so feel free to take issue with them! At the Lifehacker office, we were a bit skeptical about Wyomingite. Is it really not Wyomingian? And outside of the city, New York natives like to call ourselves “upstaters” instead of “New Yorkers.”
But it’s pretty cool that Indiana residents are officially called “Hoosiers.”