When I arrived in Maine almost a decade ago, I heard from many people that no matter what, I would always be considered someone “from away” who could never quite be accepted.

To be a true Mainer, I learned, I really ought to have been born on my grandparents’ kitchen table somewhere well beyond Portland.

It turns out, though, that Maine is more welcoming than residents think it is.

If the state really loathed outsiders so much, it wouldn’t have a U.S. senator who grew up in Virginia or a member of Congress who was raised in Minnesota.

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree arrived in the Pine Tree State as a teenager while U.S. Sen. Angus King moved to Maine after he finished law school — and got elected as governor just two decades later.

Still, though, “from away” remains something akin to an insult, a way to tag people who might be uppity and unwilling to adopt the gritty independence that has long characterized Mainers.

While the phrase may be rooted in Maine, the idea behind its present use is anything but unique.

How many university towns have “townies” sneering at academics and what they see as the spoiled students who swarm onto campus each fall? And virtually every tourist town views vacationers as odd invaders whose money is welcome but whose presence is scorned.

In Maine, we understand the mixed emotions spurred by visiting hordes. They really are “from away.”

But it’s long past time to drop that moniker for those who actually live in the Pine Tree State.

Residents are not “from away” or somehow lesser citizens. Even if they were born in Somalia or, God forbid, Massachusetts, they have exactly the same rights and responsibilities of Mainers who really were born on their grandparents’ dining room table.

Our governor gets it.

When Gov. Janet Mills delivered her first speech to the Legislature in 2019, she mentioned the many unsung Mainers, from teachers to millworkers, and reminded the state they are our friends and neighbors: immigrants, laborers, people with disabilities and even, yes, “people from away.”

I’m not sure when “from away” became a pejorative.

The earliest references I found were from newspapers published in 1850 and 1851  — The Boston Post and The Eastern Argue in Portland  — which each mentioned young men who were said to be “from away Down East.”

The president of a national doctors group in 1892 also described a colleague as hailing “from away down East” in Maine, which shows the phrase had some longevity to it.

A play called “Away Down East” showed off rural life in New England to audiences across North America in the early years of the 20th century.

A play called “Away Down East,” considered a classic at the time, toured stages across North America in the early years of the last century, making money from its depiction of a “wholesome and picturesque” rural New England.

But perhaps the most common usage of the term, from the mid-1800s until the Great Depression, came from those talking about shipping. Many vessels, from Civil War steamers to cargo holders in foreign ports, were said to be “from away down East” in Maine, which in some cases was true.

The irony is clear. The people who live in areas once considered “from away” are now among those insisting they are from here and others are the ones from away.

Increasingly, though, “from away” has been used in Maine merely to note that someone isn’t a native.

Pieces in the Kennebec Journal in 1878 and the Biddeford Journal in 1892 both mentioned political rallies that would include speakers “from away,” but nothing about the stories indicated a problem with their presence.

In an 1891 issue of the Portland Evening Express, “from away” was also used to describe people who didn’t live locally. There wasn’t even a hint that it was an insult.

Somehow, that changed.

I suspect, but can’t nail down, that the words slipped from description to insult during the nativist years after World War I, when the country shut down immigration and shut its doors to the world, a spectacularly bad policy that helped spur World War II.

The hard times of the Great Depression surely didn’t help.

Colin Woodard, a brilliant journalist with an academic bent, wrote about the use of  “from away” in his wonderful 2004 book “The Lobster Coast.”

Woodard pointed out that “in Maine’s more ornery quarters, newcomers are sometimes regarded not as potential Mainers, but as foreign colonists, folks imbued with different values, tastes, and ideas from those practiced here.”

Those “from away,” he wrote, “are often perceived to have more money, education, and political connections than their ‘native’ neighbors” who suspect the newcomers want to take over their towns and remake them.

“One might regard all this as the reactionary paranoia of an isolated, unworldly people,” Woodard wrote, “except that this is exactly what has happened in many towns up and down the coast. As elsewhere in the world, the old is vanishing, and the new looks, sounds, and smells an awful lot like an exclusive suburban subdivision.”

As Woodard recognizes, things are always changing, everywhere. But it’s also true that some traits, patterns and dreams stretch back across time, a reality easily seen in Maine because its buildings are mostly old and its industries time-honored.

Plus, of course, a place dependent on tourism would be crazy to give up much of what draws visitors to begin with.

“From away” is about people, though.

For those who use it without irony, they seem to think there are “real” Mainers whose families have for generations holed up during long winters, pushed through spring mud, scrambled through too-short summers and spent autumns stocking up for the cold to come.

And then there are the “new” Mainers who hail from faraway lands or all-too-familiar nearby states, people who don’t fit the narrative of many natives.

Honestly, though, an awful lot of those natives have simply forgotten what the past was like.

I read some 1998 congressional testimony recently from a group called the Maine Underground Railroad Association that urged lawmakers not to forget Maine’s oral traditions about its abolitionist role.

It included the admonition that “we do not need someone from away to tell us about ourselves” and reminded legislators that half of Maine’s population is “of Franco-American descent” and prone to storytelling.

A century ago, those undocumented immigrants from Quebec were the very definition of “from away” for old-time Mainers. But a couple generations later? I guess not.

In time, new Mainers become old Mainers as residency prevails over prejudice.

Even so, what strikes me is that there is a sort of lingering hurt attached to the “from away” idea, as if newcomers to Maine are taking something away rather than adding something beneficial.

It’s a preposterous notion. Immigrants bring energy, vibrancy and hope. The image of them as takers is silly to anyone who spends time talking to them.

Maine has never been a static place. When I was young, it still had log drives on its rivers and thriving mills  — and stinking water, billboards and truly awful poverty. Change comes, whether we want it or not.

Maybe we should think of it like we do restaurants.

The old diners and clam shacks are, in many cases, doing just fine in Maine. But over the years, the state has added all sorts of ethnic and innovative restaurants as well, turning itself into a foodie destination without losing many much-loved spots that catered to locals and tourists in past decades.

Embracing the independence, hard work and pride that Mainers have always had is how we’re going to make life better for our children and the generations to come.

We just don’t need to hang on to the fear and distrust of newcomers who want to join in that endeavor.

“From away” is actually just a way of saying we’re an attractive enough place that people want to come, some to stay, and build on what our ancestors created.

If we think of it that way, maybe it’s a term worth preserving. But let’s drop the sneering tone along with the prejudices that accompany it.

That said, like so many others in Maine, I am from away. But I’m glad I’m here.