Residents of Hong Kong

June 1, 2005 11:29 PM

If a resident of Australia is Australian, a resident of Holland is Dutch and Taiwan, Taiwanese; What - other than the technically correct 'Chinese' - is a resident of Hong Kong called, or referred to as?

Some previous answers in the office, Hong Kongian, Hong Kongese, Hong Kongite ...

posted by oliyoung to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

Webster's 11th says "Hong Konger", but that sounds shitty to me.
posted by interrobang at 11:36 PM on June 1, 2005

Yep, "Hong Konger" gets the most Google results of evreything I've tried.
posted by taz at 11:39 PM on June 1, 2005

That seems to be the case.
posted by vacapinta at 12:08 AM on June 2, 2005

Best answer: Hong Kong Chinese. (H.K. Chinese?)
posted by christin at 1:45 AM on June 2, 2005

Hong Kong Chinese would be my first pick. Followed by Hong Kong native, Hong Kong resident, or Hong Kong-born, depending on context. Hong Konger sounds very odd to me.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:47 AM on June 2, 2005

Hongkonese (sp?).
posted by Boo! at 3:14 AM on June 2, 2005

cantonese is slighly broader, referring to people from guangdong province and macau, as well as hong kong, but it might be useful in the right context.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:52 AM on June 2, 2005

My first thought was also Hong Kong Chinese, (it beats taz's suggestion on google) and I'm pretty certain is what the BBC use.
posted by biffa at 4:41 AM on June 2, 2005

When I was in China, I always heard "honkie" used by my hong kong friends.
posted by gd779 at 6:09 AM on June 2, 2005

I used to live in Hong Kong, and haven't heard 'honkie'. Perhaps it's a recent thing. I'd say 'Hong Kong Chinese', or more likely 'he/she's from Hong Kong,' as the first has an ethnic dimension that may not be appropriate. I'm not sure there's a rule that says there must always be an applicable adjective - I don't know, for example, what people from the Isle of Wight call themselves.

I'm also not sure about 'cantonese'. Certainly the language is Cantonese, but I'm not sure that you'd call the residents of Guangdong/Guangzhou the cantonese people these days. (Not directly comparable, but it seems odd to me to use the old name for the old country for the current people: as if we called Malaysians Malays or Zimbabweans Rhodesians)
posted by calico at 10:28 AM on June 2, 2005

When I was in China, I always heard "honkie" used by my hong kong friends.

You sure they weren't talking about you? ;)
posted by salad spork at 12:49 PM on June 2, 2005

I used to live in Hong Kong, and haven't heard 'honkie'.

Well, the friends I'm referring to all counted themselves at home in both Hong Kong and Australia, so maybe it was a term they developed just with that group of friends.
posted by gd779 at 1:01 PM on June 2, 2005

In vancouver, when I was in high school, there were plenty of hong kong chinese, who us natives vancouverites (chinese or otherwise) would derisively call "Hongers".
posted by eurasian at 1:06 PM on June 2, 2005

"Hongers" are not merely Hong Kong Chinese. "Honger" is a very racist (in a self-loathing kind of way) term that describes young chinese kids who live a specific lifestyle that is particular to current-day Taiwan, Hong Kong and urban China. i.e. Hello Kitty, rice rockets, dressing all in black, cantopop (which is usually sung in Mandarin now these days), etc.

I am a banana (you figure out what the colours imply), and it irks me to death that bananas deride Hongers as Hongers as if bananas are somehow superior because they are more "integrated" into mainstream western culture. And bananas can't accuse Hongers of being guilty of the converse, because the term "banana" is rarely applied with the same hostility that "Honger" is.

FYI, I am Chinese, born in the UK, grew up in the US, living in Canada.
posted by randomstriker at 1:54 PM on June 2, 2005