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:


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 p retty cool that Indiana residents are officially called “Hoosiers.”