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Nicknames for people from various provinces


djwebb2004

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Beijing: 京油子, lit means city slickers

Tianjin: 卫嘴子, similar meaning? or referring to odd accent, and Tianjin's role in guarding the way to Peking?

Sichuan: 川耗子, refers to the large no. of Sichuan people as "rats"

Hubei: 九头鸟: means Hubei people are crafty

Are there any more? Is there one for each province?

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You agree that you should be very careful when using these terms. Some are derived from generalized characteristics and may be considered offensive. If someone from Beijing doesn't talk in a "slicky" manner, it's inappropriate to categorize him/her as 油子 or 片子。九头鸟 is generally not a negative term though.

But they are still different from, say, "Hoosier", when used to refer to people living in Indiana.

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You agree that you should be very careful when using these terms. Some are derived from generalized characteristics and may be considered offensive. If someone from Beijing doesn't talk in a "slicky" manner, it's inappropriate to categorize him/her as 油子 or 片子。九头鸟 is generally not a negative term though.

Er, no thanks for the lecture! By the way 九头鸟 is a negative term - it implies Hubei people are crafty. 天上九头鸟,地下湖北佬. My Hubei friend was not pleased when I mentioned it!

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Tianjin: 卫嘴子, similar meaning? or referring to odd accent, and Tianjin's role in guarding the way to Peking?

As far as I can tell from a few pages on Baidu's Zhidao.baidu.com (1, 2), the 卫 was a type of military building, and 天津卫 became a colloquial term for people from Tianjin (and Tianjin itself?). The 嘴子 is explained as 天津卫的嘴皮子好使,倍儿会说话 - as the gift of the gab, in English.

Baidu's Zhidao pages are pretty good for this kind of stuff - a lot of it is copied and pasted off the Internet, but at least it puts it all in one place with a decent search function.

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Roddy, you are right about the meaning of 卫。The meaning of Tianjin itself: it apparently refers to the time an emperor crossed the river there, 天 standing for tianzi for the emperor and 津 meaning "ford" (as well as "saliva").

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