Last week in this space, I explored the possibility of coming up with a better term for people from Bend than “Bendite.”

I was simply running with an idea based on another word for Bendites I sometimes use in casual conversation: Bendinians. I don’t know why I came up with it. I also call my family Jasperians sometimes. I don’t know why I do that, either.

In short, bringing Bendinians up in a column seemed like harmless folly. I thought it would be fun to put it out into the world, along with other possible variants — Bendinians, Bendoids, Bendos and you get the idea. Just to see what sticks.

The topic struck a nerve. The initial Facebook post has 618 comments as of now.

I haven’t kept up with all the comments, to be quite honest, although I read the first few hundred. Beyond that, feelings of “I get the gist” set in. Some people got in on the fun. Some commenters — on Facebook, The Bulletin site and Instagram — threw out their own fun ideas in the comments: Benditos. Bendalorians. Bendifarians. Bendenites. One emailer told me about a ball cap he’d seen that said “Bendejo” on it. Bendys or Bendies was also posited. A few wanted to make a point by going with “Californians.”

Plenty took instant offense at the mere notion of there being an alternative to Bendite: “A second unofficial nickname for people from Bend?! Honey, get me my pearls. I feel the need to clutch coming on!”

It’s got to be exhausting when you’re constantly having to defend the good in the world, which apparently includes the word “Bendite.” Some were so shaken it reverberated up their family trees, which they invoked talking by sharing how just how many generations of their families been Bendites, dammit.

“Slow news day?” someone asked. Judging from other reactions, more than a few folks seemed to think the column was an editorial or op-ed written by a politician with clout, as though there were a concentrated campaign to change the unofficial word “Bendite” instead of it just being a column that was all my brain could come up with no matter how hard I concentrated.

Others clearly didn’t actually read the column. Did that prevent them from weighing in with an opinion about this terrible, nonexistent threat to the word “Bendite”? Heck no, judging from Facebook comments suggesting I was new here, and telling me to “GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA” even though I’ve been here going on 22 years and I’m from Miami.)

I kind of think people should read the thing they’re responding to, but I’ve spent enough time on social media that I will not be tilting at that particular windmill. I really don’t like to tell people what to do, and besides, I have a terribly atrophied attention span myself these days. I blame my phone for that, and so should you. (I said I don’t like telling people what to do, not that I never do it.)

Of course, we newspaper folk love this kind of audience engagement, so City Editor Julie Johnson created a poll to get a consensus, incorporating a mix of my and the public’s suggested alternatives to Bendite.

Here are the results thus far: Bendite is in a commanding lead at 46.4%, well ahead of Bender, which garnered 19.7%. Bendifornian is in third at 8.6%, while Bendito and Bendy are tied at 7.3%. The Facebook post alone about the poll has 75 comments.

There were not, alas, a lot of votes for my favorite, Bendinian (2.4%).

The people have spoken, and so I guess we’ll keep calling people who live here “Bendites.”

But you’ll always be Bendinians in my heart.