It’s a no brainier really that whenever you meet someone new, they at some point will ask where you live or are from. The big question is when you reply, how accurate of an answer do you give to your actual location, particularly if the person is not local to your area. I’m not intending for this to be a thread where everyone gives away their address as that would be breaching people’s privacy, but the idea is that different people have different definitions of where they live, so this is more to see which is more common.
For example, my non term time address is in a large village in Dorset, but if I responded to the question with the name of the village, aside from privacy concerns, hardly anyone apart from locals would have heard of it. On the other hand, responding with Dorset would be too broad due to the county’s size, so I would need to narrow it down to nearest towns. I have responded with both Poole and Wimborne in the past, but despite being larger settlements are still amazingly largely unheard of from people not local to the area. In more recent times I have had to say, “near Bournemouth” as far more people have heard of that town and can locate it in relation to other major towns in the UK, but despite being the nearest postal town is not really accurate to where I actually live. It’s a bit like living in Wolverhampton or Dudley and saying you’re from Birmingham because the latter is a more widely recognised city.
I guess how geographically accurate you are is all down to personal interpretation really. For example, certain Croydon residents may prefer to identify with Surrey rather than London, or they may just simply say the name of the London borough to avoid that can of worms!
For example, my non term time address is in a large village in Dorset, but if I responded to the question with the name of the village, aside from privacy concerns, hardly anyone apart from locals would have heard of it. On the other hand, responding with Dorset would be too broad due to the county’s size, so I would need to narrow it down to nearest towns. I have responded with both Poole and Wimborne in the past, but despite being larger settlements are still amazingly largely unheard of from people not local to the area. In more recent times I have had to say, “near Bournemouth” as far more people have heard of that town and can locate it in relation to other major towns in the UK, but despite being the nearest postal town is not really accurate to where I actually live. It’s a bit like living in Wolverhampton or Dudley and saying you’re from Birmingham because the latter is a more widely recognised city.
I guess how geographically accurate you are is all down to personal interpretation really. For example, certain Croydon residents may prefer to identify with Surrey rather than London, or they may just simply say the name of the London borough to avoid that can of worms!
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