Dubliner

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who was born in or lives in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland
2. Someone native to or residing in the Irish city of Dublin
3. An individual associated with Dublin by birth or long residence, especially in the Irish capital

Etymology: Dublin's name comes from Irish "dubh linn", meaning "black pool", a reference to the dark water of the River Liffey's estuary where the city grew up. Its Middle Irish form "Dublind" passed into English as Dublin, and the word "Dubliner" is simply that place name with the agent suffix "-er" added to it. The suffix is one of English's oldest and most productive tools for naming people by origin or occupation, descending through Old English "-ere" from Latin "-arius", which entered Old French as "-ier" before English borrowed it. Compounds like this show how a city's name becomes a label for its people. English speakers apply the same pattern to countless places, from "Londoner" to "New Yorker" to "Parisian", though the last of these takes a different suffix from French. "Dubliner" follows the native English route, so it sounds like the English words it sits alongside rather than an import.