What is "janner"

Janner is an English regional nickname associated with Plymouth both as a noun and as an adjective for the local accent and colloquialisms. In 1987 Cyril Tawney, in his book Grey Funnel Lines, described its meaning as "a person from Devon", deriving from Cousin Jan (the Devon form of John), but "more particularly in naval circles anyone from the Plymouth area".

With the changes in the local economy in Plymouth over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, from the Royal Navy being the major employer to being a university city housing a large number of students from outside the city, the term has developed an additional secondary pejorative sense describing the locals.

The Member of Parliament for Plymouth, Devonport, Alison Seabeck, showed her ignorance of the term in 2005 when, while still a candidate, she was asked by the local paper: "What is a Janner?" The Express on Sunday reported her reply:

The flustered candidate wailed: "I don't know. You're not going to print this, are you?" Unfortunately they did. The answer is a "Plymothian".

For many years there was a cartoon in the Plymouth Evening Herald entitled 'The Janners'. Many pamphlets circulate with mischievous amusing and sometimes erotic anthologies and there are short dictionaries of Janner vocabulary, e.g. the Janner TextBook.

The term features in the football team Plymouth Argyle supporters' chants, particularly its variant on the folksong Oggy Land, and in 2010 it was used in a television advertisement for Aviva Car Insurance in which Paul Whitehouse as a Plymouth Argyle supporter driving to an away match exhorts a potential passenger to "get on you janner". In April 2012 a new rugby league trophy called the Barum Janner cup was introduced for competition matches between Barnstaple's North Devon Raiders and the Plymouth Titans. The cup's name is a combination of the nicknames for inhabitants of the two places.

Janner is a surname, and may refer to:

• Barnett Janner, Baron Janner
• Ferdinand Janner
• Greville Janner, Baron Janner of Braunstone
• Laura Janner-Klausner