Friday, January 16, 2026

What do you call a person from Brussels?

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Brussels is an officially bilingual French-Dutch city. It’s by origin Flemish (and used to be called ‘Broek-Zele’, or ‘longhouse in the swamp’) but today has a majority of French speaking people, a minority of Dutch speaking people and a large and growing international community speaking all the languages of the world. A very small group still speak and cherish Brussels, the Brussels dialect, which is a Flemish dialect with a lot of loan words from French.

In French, a person from Brussels is called ‘un Bruxellois’ (male) or ‘une Bruxelloise’ (female).

In Dutch, you say ‘een Brusselaar’ or ‘een Brusselse’.

In Brussels, a person from Brussels is called ‘ne Brüsseleer’ /‘brys le:r/. A person born and bred in Brussels who can speak Brussels is called ‘een ket’ or ‘ketje’ (affective), which means ‘little rascal’ or ‘smart boy living in the street’. The word is Flemish and has the same origin as the English word ‘kid’.

Some people have suggested ‘Brunelleke’ as a female alternative for ‘ketje’ but the name is not widely used yet.

In English you could say ‘a Brusseler’ (as you say ‘a Londoner’ or ‘a New Yorker’) but I’ve never heard anyone use it.

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