Identity
To express location within the Merseyside area by the preposition on – thus "on Merseyside" as opposed to "in Merseyside" – was traditionally the more usual. However, the logic of suggestions in support of this from some quarters (that, after all, one would always be "on” the side of the Mersey, not "in" it) falls down; since it is, in fact, entirely possible to be situated "in" or "on" “side” of the River Mersey and area(s) thus designated. Therefore, more recent usage tends to draw distinctions between the geographical "Merseyside" – for which "on" is considered appropriate – and the Metropolitan county of "Merseyside", for which "in" is used.
Ipsos MORI polls in the boroughs of Sefton and Wirral in the 2000s showed that in general, residents of these boroughs identified slightly more strongly to Merseyside than to Lancashire or Cheshire respectively, but their affinity to Merseyside was more likely to be "fairly strong" than "very strong".
Read more about this topic: History Of Merseyside
Famous quotes containing the word identity:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)
“All that remains is the mad desire for present identity through a woman.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)