I'm Minion Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

Today, we'll talk about the names we give people from different places, the difference

between the words healthy and healthful, and we'll get to the bottom of the origin of

the word we've talked about the last two weeks, Sussese.

Emily from the Greater Pittsburgh area submitted a question about names for people from different

places.

Specifically, she grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, and one of her college professors

referred to people from her town as East Liverpool Bliens.

Is that correct?

Well, yes, actually it is, but let's talk about demonyms in general first, and then we'll

get back to Emily's specific example.

Even though the spelling of demonyms begins with demon, D-E-M-O-N, don't worry, it's

not something that'll haunt you in the night.

According to Mariam Webster, it means, quote, a word used to denote a person who inhabits

or is native to a particular place, unquote.

You may also hear demonyms referred to as denizen names, denizen meaning an inhabitant or resident

of a particular place.

Keep in mind that, although they sometimes have the same form, demonyms are different from

descriptive adjectives, which are used to describe a person or object from a certain place.

Demonyms are nouns, so for example, you'd refer to a person from Spain as a spaniard, but

a bottle of rioja as a Spanish wine, using Spanish as an adjective.

...