Picture a New Yorker. A Parisian. A Londoner. A San Franciscan. Each of the world's great cities has its own noun for its residents, with all the attendant associations and stereotypes. But what are you if you live in Milpitas? In Sunnyvale? In Vallejo? Do cities on the periphery have a word for "us"?

The answer can be hard to pin down. Nominalized place names, called demonyms, adhere to few linguistic conventions. Some suffixes are common, like -ish and -ian, but beyond that, anything goes.

Using a variety of subjective research methods, like informal Facebook surveys and interviews, SFGATE has attempted to compile a list of Bay Area demonyms. Can you guess which ones are real and which are bunk? Did we get it wrong?

Click through the quiz below to find your city's demonym.

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What's in a name?

Many of the civic officials SFGATE spoke to say there's no end-all-be-all demonym for their city on the books. In Berkeley's case, the divide is between "Berkeleyan" and "Berkeleyite." In an essay in Berkeleyside, Lance Knobel argued for "Berkeleyite," saying it rolled more smoothly off the tongue. But "Berkeleyan" appears in the Merriam-Webster dictionary (albeit in reference to philosopher Bishop Berkeley, not the Californian city).

According to spokesperson Matthai Chakko, a search through the city's records turns up far more results for "Berkeleyan," though written use of either term is rare.

"We have no official position on this," he said in an email.

Other locales, like Daly City, just don't seem to lend themselves to demonyms at all.

"As a lifetime resident, I call myself a 'Daly City resident,'" city clerk K. Annette Hipona said in an email. There's no official demonym for Fremont, either, according to two city spokespeople.

That's partly a morphological problem, said Jenny Lereder, assistant professor of linguistics at San Francisco State University. English has few suffixes that sound natural when attached to a word like "city." But demonyms are more than the sum of their syllables, she said. They also signify a unique sense of community among locals.

"Exactly what characterizes a region, such that you can be from there?" Lereder said. "Are the places that have demonyms places ... well known enough in the US or the world, such that it would make sense that we would talk about that place as an identity term?"

The answers to those questions might help explain why Berkeley, world-famous for its university and its left-leaning political climate, has two unofficial demonyms, while more suburban neighborhoods might not have any.

A Livermoronic legacy

The city of Livermore makes for an interesting illustration of Lereder's theory. Located about 10 miles from the Dublin/Pleasanton BART terminus, and with about one-tenth the population of San Francisco, it ranks as a mid-sized Bay Area suburb. But for generations, its residents have referred to themselves with an unusual moniker.

A person from Livermore is a proud... Livermoron.

"It is ironically self-deprecating but it's also affectionate," longtime resident Meriann Kelley said via Facebook.

If anything, Livermore has a reputation for braniacs. It's home to two major research labs, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, and was immortalized in 2012 with the naming of periodic element 116 — Livermorium.

"Our city was basically founded and expanded on brains and ingenuity," Kelley said. "We were supposedly a 'cow town' but we were up to our eyeballs in scientists."

The tongue-in-cheek demonym has grown less popular over time, she added — newer residents now call themselves "Livermorians" — but in an informal poll of two Livermore Facebook groups, more than 200 were willing to voluntarily identify themselves as "Livermorons."

"This is a great juxtaposition of who is a long time resident of Livermore and who is not," one group member said in a comment. "Livermoron is the preferred term for most of us who have been here for more than 20 years."

Bay Areans?

When speaking to someone not familiar with greater Bay Area geography, many locals find it more expedient to generalize their hometown to simply "the Bay Area." ("East/South/North Bay" might do around fellow Californians.) The Bay Area certainly has the distinct identity and international import of a demonym-able place – and yet, there are few "Bay Areans." What gives?

Lereder blames the vowels. "E-A-ER is illegal in English. You can say it but it violates (the) constraints of (the) language," she said. "We can't do 'Bay Area-ers' ... (That's) too many vowels in a row."

And then, of course, "Bay Arean" has an unpalatable homophone.

"It's just unfortunate that the way refer to the Bay Area is 'Bay Area'," Lereder said. "It doesn't work because of the word Aryan — I mean it really doesn't work, in that sense."

You can always just say you're from "the city."