Dubliners

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Natives or long-term residents of the Irish capital city ; a famous 1914 collection of short stories by James Joyce depicting life in early twentieth-century Dublin
2. Those who were born in or call Ireland's capital home ; the title of a celebrated short story cycle by the author James Joyce set in Dublin
3. People from the city of Dublin in Ireland ; the name given to James Joyce's influential book of fifteen linked stories portraying urban Irish life

Etymology: Dublin itself has an older name than most of its residents' nicknames suggest. Its Irish form, "Dubh Linn", meant "black pool", a reference to a dark tidal pool on the River Liffey where the city's settlement grew. The name passed into English largely unchanged, and the people who live there took it as a plain suffix: "Dublin" plus "-er", the same ending that gives "Londoner" or "New Yorker". The suffix itself has a long pedigree. The "-er" ending that forms words for inhabitants descends through Old English "-ere" and Old French "-ier" from the Latin "-arius", a marker of a person connected with something. English has used this pattern for centuries to name people by their place, so a Dubliner is, etymologically, someone "of Dublin" in the same way a sailor belongs to the sea.