Newfoundlanders aren't the only baymen out there

What could be more fundamental to Newfoundland identity than whether you identify as a bayman or a townie?

The word "bayman" is so ubiquitous on the island today you'd be forgiven for thinking it originated here. In fact, it's been used since the 1600s in reference to coastal settlers from Belize to New York City.

Cargo aboard the Mayflower

"Baymen" arrived in the Americas almost with the Mayflower itself.

In 1641, New England's Plymouth Colony, which had been settled by the passengers of the Mayflower 21 years earlier, had a boundary dispute with the Massachusetts Bay Colony next door. In their court records, Plymouth officials referred to the residents of Massachusetts Bay as "the Bay men" for short.

"Baymen," it seems, wasn't always an umbrella term for anyone who lived on the coast. Instead, it started out as what's called a demonyma word that designates the residents of a particular place. Words like "Canadian," "Labradorian," and "Corner Brooker" are demonyms.

One of the easiest ways to make a new demonym in English was simply to add the word "men" to any place name. Soin the 1600s and 1700s, we get "Hudson's Bay men," "Casco Bay men," and "Tor Bay men" note that last one is a reference to Torbay, England, not Torbay, Newfoundland!

Historically, "men" was an ambiguous term that could mean either human males in particular or human beings in general. When used as a demonym, it typically included all of a community's men, womenand children.

Over time, the word "baymen" became disconnected from the names of specific bays and developed its own meaning and Newfoundland wasn't the first place this happened.

In the 1630s, some 4,500 kilometresto Newfoundland's southwest, English and Scottish buccaneers settled in the Bay of Honduras, on the north side of what is now Belize City, leaving behind the perilous life of piracy for the labour of cutting logwood.

Their outlaw experience helped them evade the region's Spanish colonial authorities, and they became on-the-ground representatives of the British, who dubbed them the Baymen. They're still remembered in the national anthem of Belize:

"Arise, ye sons of the Baymen's clan/ Put on your armour, clear the land! / Drive back the tyrants, let despots flee /Land of the free by the Carib Sea!"

From the bay to the big city

"Bayman" also had special significance in Long Island and nearby boroughs of New York City.

There, beginning in the early 1800s, the word was used to distinguish those who made their living harvesting shellfish in the shallow waters of the bay from deep-sea fishers and whalers.

The lyrics of Billy Joel's 1989 folk-rock ballad The Downeaster'Alexa,'which lament the passing of the Long Island bayman's way of life, would resonate with many outport Newfoundlanders:

"I was a bayman like my father was before / Can't make a living as a bayman anymore / There ain't much future for a man who works the sea / But there ain't no island left for islanders like me."

"Bayman" acquired other meanings, too, over the course of the 19th century. In 1873, U.S. navy nurses were redesignated "baymen," probably in reference to the sick bay where they worked. A bayman also seems to have been a type of ship that was used in the mackerel fishery.

Baymen come to Newfoundland

It took until the mid-1800s for "baymen" to find a home in Newfoundland.

Here, again, the word first popped up in connection with specific bays on the island. From 1856 to 1859, there was even a newspaper in Harbour Grace called theConception-Bay Man.

But in a place where the needs and experiences of rural people were worlds away from those of its urban population, "baymen" soon became a useful way to distinguish the residents of the outports from the city-dwellers of St. John's.

Newspapers tracked the representation of baymen in government, and letters to the editor signed with pen names like "A Bayman" argued in favour of policies that would benefit rural Newfoundlanders, like Confederation with Canada.

It didn't take long, either, for the stereotypes about baymen we're still familiar with today to emerge.

On the one hand, baymen had a reputation for being tough and resourceful.

An 1879 article in the St. John's Evening Telegram headlined "How a Bayman Handled Three Rowdies" recounted the way an outport visitor to St. John's beat the tar out of a gang of hooligans who attacked him unprovoked, laying them out with three swings of his "brawny arm" before dropping into a nearby shop for a ginger beer.

On the other hand, baymen were often dismissed as backward by their peers in the city.

In 1882, Telegram editors accused their competitors at the Evening Mercury of publishing a column "meant to throw dust in the eyes of 'simple Baymen,' as the editor supposes; but who, Baymen and all as they are, may be able to confute his fallacies, and show him that they are neither fools nor asses!"

There's no doubt that "bayman," as well as later coinages like "baygirl" and "baywoman," can be used in a derogatory way. In 1993 a discrimination case was successfully brought against an employer in St. John's for repeatedly calling an employee a "baywoman."

But there's pride in being a bayman, too, especially when it comes to the eternal rivalry between baymen and townies, and Newfoundland's baymen will be happy to hear they can chalk up another victory in the arena of etymology. While the word "bayman" is almost 400 years old, "townie" wasn't coined until the 1820s.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador