the morning news spell out the names of the inhabitants of the us states, confirming that people from new hampshire really are known as ‘new hampshirites’. this has always sounded very odd to my english ears because i’d expect the name for a person from new hampshire to be the same as the name for a person from hampshire with ‘new’ tacked on the front. except we don’t seem to have a name for people from hampshire.

hantonians or hantsonians sound right to me, using the standard abbreviation ‘hants’ for hampshire.

of all the (old) counties of england i can only think of a handful that have proper names for their inhabitants. cumbrians, northumbrians, lancastrians and salopians (that’s shropshire). and even then i wonder if lancastrian actually refers to people from the city of lancaster and not the county of lancashire.