Drive-by poll

[solo]

Poll #22618

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

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Yes, this is a subtitling question...

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Dixing people, person; guy from Dixing
4 (10.3%)

Dixingren
35 (89.7%)

Its complicated and I'll tell you why
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[xparrot]

And while there might be several possible ways to translate a demonym, the most common/unmarked translations would be Dixingan or Dixingian.

I guess this is the part I'm balking at in turn... There are multiple native English speakers on this post explaining why, to us, "Dixingian" does not sound like a good, common translation. It looks "weird", I think because there are very few -ing placenames. When I look at it I naturally parse it as Dixin-gian, like Norwegian. So if the "standard" translation is not a good option, then the -ren suffix looks quite acceptable and no more unusual than Welsh, or Spaniard, or any of the other many nonstandard demonyns we use. It's easy to parse as a "translation" even though it's actually a transliteration, as opposed to Shen-jiaoshou which is clearly not English.

(And non-native English speakers still have to learn all of those anyway, so...)

[extrapenguin]

Out of curiosity, I did some Ctrl+F'ing on the demonyms wikipedia page. We have Beijingers, Readingites, and Wyomingites as demonyms for place names that end with -ing. Do Dixinger and Dixingite sound just as weird to you?

(And as a native English speaker, I must state that -ren doesn't sound like a demonym at all, since r doesn't appear in demonyms, except at the end of -er. I can parse it because I know 人 is how Chinese forms demonyms, but it requires more parsing than necessary, since translations exist.)

[starandrea]

Sorry to jump in, especially answering a question that wasn't directed at me, but I am so intrigued that... well, I wanted to. :)

Do Dixinger and Dixingite sound just as weird to you?

No, interestingly. Good find.

[solo]

I'm coming round to not finding Dixingite quite so weird any more.

But Dixinger sounds oddly German to me, because they use -er as demonym suffixes a *lot*: Deutscher, Inder, Spanier, Italiener, Afrikaner, New Yorker, Texaner, Londoner, Kölner... etc. So I get, like, cognitive dissonance, and want to ask whether female Dixinger are 'Dixingerinnen'.

Oh, language...

[extrapenguin]

I'm coming round to not finding Dixingite quite so weird any more.
\o/

Yeah, Dixinger sounds like Dixing would be a city in Europe to me. Hearing that it's used as a demonym suffix in German would handily explain its prevalence in that area!

[xparrot]

Dixingite and Dixinger definitely are easier for me to parse; if I saw them on their own I'd be more likely to end up with "Dixing" as the place, and would be more likely to pronounce them correctly rather than say "Dixin-gian".

Personally I still prefer Dixingren because as these examples prove, English does not have a single standard even for the same ending sounds, so I personally feel like any version is making an arbitrary decision for a translation that there would be no reason for others to follow. Dixingren is the only option that has a chance for consistency. And right now it's the most popular choice in the English speaking side of the fandom, so...

[firestar]

Running through various UK cities, I can think of quite a few different suffixes for people from those cities, which may be why 'Dixingren' doesn't even twig for me.

Londonder - London
Brummie - Birmingham
Mancunian - Manchester (see also Glaswegian for Glasgow as mentioned above)

Also -ish in terms of country suffix instead of city (English, Scottish, Irish etc. At least for countries ending in -land. *stares at Wales as the odd one out*)