One problem with our state government is that it has rules that are not enforced, specifically Article II, Section 30a, of our state constitution: “The English language is the official language of the State of Colorado.”

Just what that means is rather vague. Since it says “English,” rather than “American English,” do our cars have bonnets, boots and windscreens instead of hoods, trunks and windshields?

No court has ruled, so it falls on vigilantes like me to enforce Official English. One frequent question is what to call a resident: Are you a “Coloradoan” or a “Coloradan?”

The informal rule is explained in the 1945 book “Names on the Land” by George R. Stewart, which I do not have, so I cite it secondhand from “The American Language” by H.L. Mencken, updated in 1982 by Raven I. McDavid Jr., and David W. Maurer.

By and large, when a place name ends in “o,” you add “an.” The exception is if the place name is of Spanish origin; then you drop the “o” before adding “an.”

This observed rule appears to work in practice. Idaho and Chicago derive from Native American languages, not Spanish, and their residents are Idahoans and Chicagoans.

San Francisco comes from Spanish, and thus San Franciscans reside there. Residents of other realms with Spanish names are Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Since Colorado is a Spanish word for the color red, we are properly Coloradans, not Coloradoans.

As best I know, most Colorado newspapers follow this rule, but there have been exceptions. Most notable, perhaps, is the “Fort Collins Coloradoan.” It is owned by the Gannett chain, which until 1989 also owned the daily newspaper in the capital of the Land of Enchantment, the “Santa Fe New Mexican.”

Consistency would seem to require either a Fort Collins Coloradan or a Santa Fe New Mexicoan, at least when both newspapers were under the same ownership.

At the Coloradoan, state residents used to be Coloradoans, but now we’re Coloradans, according to Jason Melton, a copy editor at the paper. The change came a couple of years ago, and now the only Coloradoan published there is the paper’s name.

The Pueblo Chieftain also used Coloradoan until a few years ago, when it switched to Coloradan, according to my friend Hal Walter, a part-time copy editor there. However, consistency does not rule. The residents of Pueblo (Spanish for town) should be Pueblans by the rule that gives us Coloradan, but in the Chieftain, they’re Puebloans.

“Puebloan” also appears in the modern Politically Correct Southwestern Dialect, in reference to the people who built at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon a millennium ago. In recent years, I’ve been told that we should talk about “Ancestral Puebloans” rather than “Anasazi,” since Anasazi derives from a Navajo term for “enemy ancestors” and is thus somehow insulting, or perhaps dismissive of modern Pueblo peoples because it ignores their ancestors’ probable role in construction.

I continue to use “Anasazi.” For one thing, it has no meaning in English other than “the people who built that old stuff around the Four Corners.” For another, ever since the Pueblo Chieftain didn’t hire me in 1983, I prefer not to spell “Pueblan” as “Puebloan.”

At any rate, our legislature seems to enjoy passing resolutions this year, so could the General Assembly please settle this issue and officially resolve that residents of the Centennial State are Coloradans, lest some English- only fanatic try to make us Color-Reddians? A resolution would be one small but useful step toward our own Official English.

Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.