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Red Deerians, eh?

Linguistic Recommendations and Reminders

In many cities, it's easy to know what to call the residents. People from London are Londoners; those from Ottawa, Ottawans; from Toronto, Torontonians. Some demonyms are a little less obvious. The demonym Haligonians, for instance, is used to describe the residents of Halifax. These names usually evolve over the course of a city's history; however, in Red Deer, Alberta, they decided to try something new.

The City of Red Deer conducted a poll earlier this summer. The pollsters received 500 responses from the just under 90,000 people who live in Red Deer. The final tally was 236 votes for Red Deerian and 179 votes for Red Deerite. The results of the poll are available here: Red Deerian comes out on top (www)