Dinner or Supper? What Albertans Call the Evening Meal

Language

Aug 2

Ask an Albertan what they call the evening meal and the answer may seem obvious. Then ask their parents.

Some families sit down to supper every night. Others have dinner. Many people use both words without thinking much about the distinction. An ordinary meal at home might be supper, while Christmas supper just sounds wrong.

For anyone who grew up in Alberta, deciding which word is normal can be surprisingly difficult. Recent research suggests there is a good reason for that uncertainty. Alberta is divided almost evenly between dinner and supper in some age groups, while younger speakers appear to be changing the province’s vocabulary.

Supper remains strong among older Albertans

The New Survey of Canadian English asked participants what they called their “main evening meal.” The choices were dinner, supper or another response.

Conducted in 2023 and 2024, the survey gathered approximately 14,000 responses from across Canada. For its regional analysis, the researchers narrowed the sample to 8,951 native speakers of Canadian English who still lived in the province where they had grown up. That allowed them to examine provincial patterns while reducing the effects of people moving between regions. Alberta contributed 922 responses to the restricted sample.

The Alberta results show a clear difference between generations.

Among Albertans aged 55 and older, 65 per cent chose supper, while 32 per cent chose dinner. Supper was still the familiar evening word for nearly two out of every three people in that age group.

The middle generation was much harder to classify. Among respondents aged 30 to 54, dinner led with 48 per cent, followed closely by supper at 44 per cent.

Among Albertans under 30, dinner had taken the lead. Fifty-four per cent chose dinner and 33 per cent chose supper. Another 13 per cent selected a different response. The published chart does not show what those other answers were, although the size of that group suggests that dinner and supper do not capture everyone’s habits neatly.

The Alberta pattern looks like a language change unfolding across generations. Older speakers strongly favour supper. The middle group is divided. Dinner has become the majority choice among the youngest respondents.

Alberta sounds different from its neighbours

The results become more interesting when Alberta is placed beside the other western provinces.

Saskatchewan remains firmly attached to supper. Even among respondents under 30, 68 per cent chose supper and only 21 per cent chose dinner. Older Saskatchewan respondents selected supper at an overwhelming rate of 89 per cent.

Manitoba sits closer to Alberta. Supper led among Manitobans aged 55 and older, while dinner moved slightly ahead among those under 30.

British Columbia followed a much stronger dinner pattern. Dinner was selected by 64 per cent of its oldest respondents and 91 per cent of those under 30.

Alberta’s older speakers therefore resemble their Prairie neighbours. Its youngest speakers are moving closer to the British Columbia pattern, although dinner has not reached anything close to the same level of dominance.

The national numbers add another surprise. Across Canada, 54 per cent of respondents under 30 still chose supper. Alberta’s younger dinner majority stands out within that broader result.

Dinner has never belonged to one time of day

Part of the confusion comes from the history of the words themselves.

Historically, dinner referred to the principal meal of the day. Its meaning depended on the importance of the meal more than its place on the clock. Dinner could be served around noon, especially when the largest cooked meal happened during the working day.

Supper generally referred to the final meal of the day. It was often eaten later and could be lighter than dinner.

Those older distinctions produced several meal sequences. One family might eat breakfast, dinner and supper. Another might have breakfast, lunch and dinner. A third might call the midday meal lunch and still use supper in the evening.

As daily schedules changed and the main cooked meal increasingly moved to the evening, dinner moved with it in many households. Supper continued in others, carried through ordinary family speech.

The words can also change with the occasion. A household that eats supper on a weeknight may serve Christmas dinner. Someone who calls the meal dinner at home may still attend a church supper. The McGill survey asked participants to choose one term for their main evening meal, so it could not record every situation in which a speaker might switch between the two.

The Nordic words do not map neatly onto English

The distinction becomes even less tidy when the English words are compared with the languages Nordic immigrants brought to the Prairies.

In Swedish, middag means the principal meal of the day, although the word also refers to the middle of the day. Norwegian uses the closely related middag for a main meal eaten at midday or later. Neither word automatically tells a listener that the meal will be served at noon.

Modern Danish places middag more firmly in the evening. The Danish dictionary defines it as the larger hot meal eaten at the beginning of the evening and gives aftensmad, literally evening food, as a synonym. It also records an older use of middag for a hot midday meal, particularly in rural speech.

Icelandic keeps a clearer distinction between miðdagur, a meal eaten around the middle of the day, and kvöldmatur or kvöldverður, both referring to an evening meal.

Finnish has its own overlapping pair. Päivällinen is commonly used for the day’s later main meal, while illallinen refers to a meal eaten in the evening. Depending on context, either may be translated into English as dinner, while illallinen can also be rendered as supper.

These terms offer no simple route from a Nordic language to either dinner or supper. A family’s eventual English usage could have been shaped after immigration by when the main meal was served and by the vocabulary heard in the surrounding community.

Family words can outlive their origins

A 2019 study of 884 Ontario speakers found that meal names varied with both community history and age. Dinner was strongest in Toronto and southern communities associated with Loyalist settlement. Supper appeared more often in northern communities with European and Scots-Irish settlement histories. Younger speakers were increasingly choosing dinner.

That study dealt with Ontario, so its regional findings should not be applied directly to Alberta. Its broader conclusion is still useful. Everyday vocabulary can carry traces of settlement and family history long after speakers stop noticing anything unusual about the words they use.

A child hears “supper is ready” every evening and repeats it as an adult. Another grows up hearing dinner and assumes everyone else does too. Marriage, moving and new generations can introduce another word, leaving a family using both.

The Alberta findings capture that process in motion. Supper remains part of the province’s vocabulary, particularly among older people. Dinner has gained ground quickly enough that many younger Albertans may hear supper as an older family word rather than the automatic name of the evening meal.

What did your family call the evening meal, and where did you grow up? Did your parents or grandparents use a different word?

It is often translated as "cozy," but that simple definition only captures part of its meaning. Koselig describes the feeling of comfort, warmth, hospitality, and connection that comes from spending time with people you enjoy or finding contentment in familiar surroundings. It can describe a room, a conversation, a family gathering, or even an afternoon spent outdoors.

Löyly: The Finnish Word at the Heart of Sauna

The ladle tips. Water strikes the stones with a hiss, vanishes, and returns as a wave of humid heat. It rises toward the ceiling before rolling across the upper bench. A few seconds later, the whole room feels different.

That movement has a name in Finnish: löyly.

English translations usually settle on “steam.” The word covers more than the vapour released from wet stones. It can describe the heated wave moving through the room, the character of the heat, and the quality of the sauna session.

Friluftsliv: The Norwegian Idea of Belonging to the Land on the Canadian Prairies

Some places become home the day you arrive. Others take time.

The Norwegian word friluftsliv is often translated as "open-air life" or "life in the outdoors," but those definitions only tell part of the story.

Lagom: What a Swedish Idea of "Enough" Means on the Canadian Prairies

LAH — gom

Some words resist translation.

The Swedish word lagom is one of them. It is often defined as "not too much, not too little—just right," but that brief explanation only hints at what the word means. Lagom reflects an approach to life that values moderation, practicality, and contentment. It encourages people to recognize when they have enough rather than constantly searching for more.

Utflykt: The Swedish Tradition of Outdoor Life

There is a Swedish word, utflykt, that is often translated as “outing” or “excursion,” though neither term fully describes how it is used. It refers to time spent outside the home where movement, rest, and eating occur as part of the same sequence. The term is common in everyday language and carries no formal or elevated meaning.

Shara Cooper MA, MFA

Shara Cooper is the founder of Nordic Prairie Life (formerly, Recipe and Roots). She is the mother of two teenage daughters, one dog (The Mediocre Gatsby), and one cat (Princess Roseabella the First aka Rosie). She lives in the Edmonton, Alberta. You can find her writing most recently in the Toronto Star.

https://www.sharacooper.ca