This seems to be one of those deals like “turn down the AC” that is ambiguous and should probably be avoided altogether because there is no clear agreement on what it means. I have my own inclination of how to interpret it, but I won’t say just yet until I let the poll numbers come in for a while.
I started at X, am now at Z, with a stop or journey through Y on the way.
Eonwe’s #3 choice; it implies to me an intermediate stage. I will use “originally” if it’s obvious (say by accent) that the place I identify with is not my childhood home or birthplace. I could say “by way of” also to indicate a long period of living elsewhere even if I’m back to my place of origin.
You don’t think Z is the place they are *visiting *right now, or maybe temporarily living in, but still think of themselves as a long term, ongoing resident of Y?
I’m still trying to be cagey about what I personally think, but I can say that I asked my wife, and her first answer was that she can see it either way and agrees that it’s too ambiguous. I tried to pin her down by asking “what do you think is the logical way it *should *be meant?” and her answer on the logic was the opposite of mine. I think we both implicitly think, sure, when you say this you are likely to be in some third location Z, but that either X or Y is the place you fairly permanently call home, and the other one is where you were born. But we disagree about which one is the birthplace.
I guess that’s the way I could have asked it more clearly, without worrying about Z and whether you still live in X or Z: just, “which is the birthplace?”
ETA: Is it possible to edit the poll? Because while in comments I’m interested in hearing about all the permutations, I would like to keep the poll binary and just focus on whether Chicago or Seattle is the birthplace.
My first reaction was that it is meaningless, then I chose 2, but I still think it is meaningless. I would say, “I am from Philly, but now live in Montreal”.
I do think it is the type of phrase a style manual would presumably say one should avoid.
My initial reaction was to think that the clear logic was behind the idea (which is winning the poll) that the “from” should be the birthplace, and the “by way of” someplace lived more recently (or possibly still). But on both Mad Men and Nashville, the usage was the opposite: the “by way of” was followed by the birthplace. This is also what my wife picked as more logical, and she has helped me see the logic a bit: “by way of” meaning something like “that was the place that delivered me to the other place I lived later”. So now I can kind of see it 50/50 either way, which just underlines what a useless expression it is.
Tangentially, I have never known where to say I am “from”. I lived the first three or four months of my life in Kenya (where I also spent half my sophomore year of high school but have otherwise not been at any other time). Then a year or two in Palo Alto, a year in Connecticut, after which we moved to the first place I can remember: Chapel Hill, NC. But even there, though it once seemed solidly where I was from, seems less solid in retrospect. I was there from age three until the end of second grade, then again for fourth and fifth grade, again for seventh grade, and finally for the first half of ninth grade. Minnesota was the place I was ping-ponging back and forth from during most of that, and it is where I finished high school and started college (and also later lived for a couple years in my twenties). So am I “from” Minnesota? North Carolina? Kenya? (That last one seems absurd to say as a place I’m “from”, although it certainly seems fine to specifically say I was born there, and also spent half a year of high school there.)
It seems to me that if someone in San Francisco said in, I drove from Kansas City by way of Denver or by way of I-80, the meaning would be obvious that KC came before Denver or the I-80. I would argue the meaning is equally obvious even if the locations of the two cities didn’t make it patently so.
I don’t really see the “living in” situation as different. How can “by way of” not mean the intermediate point?
I think part of the problem is that “from…by way of” is kind of weird in a travel sense. Wouldn’t it be more normal to say “I went to Denver by way of KC”?
I don’t think it’s all that ambiguous, but I guess it’s just how I read it.
To me “By way of” always “I passed through” and so the by way of location is always just a route from one place to another.
It’s much more clear if I use the same wording when we’re talking about driving directions. If I say “I came from Seattle by way of I-5” then it should be understand that I-5 is not where I started, it’s just the route I took to get here. In driving directions, the phrasing avoids ambiguity because we assume that you can’t be from a street.
To me, though, the same logic applies to the statement in the poll. “By way of Seattle” means that Seattle was your route to arrive here from Chicago.
I agree with your logic, but it clearly is ambiguous even if we think it should not be. A significant minority of respondents here, as well as at least two television writers, see it the opposite way.
It would if you were back home in St. Louis, I guess. But my post posited a person in the destination talking. Someone in Denver would say “I came from St. Louis by way of Kansas City.”
The construct only works with at least three points. If you moved from Chicago to Seattle, never having lived anywhere else, it’s simply wrong to use “by way of” because there is no significant waypoint. There is no right way to use it in reference to only two places. “I’m from Seattle by way of Chicago” is closer to correct because “by way of” indicates past tense, but it’s still wrong.
I’m pretty surprised by the poll results. I don’t see any logical argument that could be made that you are from someplace you were, by way of someplace you are.
But you’re in Seattle! You don’t get to Seattle by way of Seattle!
This makes sense if you’re asked by your new neighbor after you move from Seattle to Denver where you’re from and you say “Chicago, by way of Seattle” but the construct doesn’t work with only two places. Even then, it’s clunky and archaic. Please don’t say it anymore. 
Sorry, I meant:
“I am from Chicago, by way of Seattle” is more correctly interpreted as “I was born in Seattle and live in Chicago” than the opposite. But again, both are wrong. “By way of” necessitates three or more points.
I have no idea.
This is as confusing to me as people saying the time as “quarter of” something, and I can’t tell if they mean “quarter to” or “quarter past.” As far as I can tell it can mean either, or both, and that’s the same with the OPs question.
“Quarter of” to me is unambiguously quarter to the hour.
“Turn down the AC” as mentioned in the OP is a bit more interesting. I would interpret it as “turn down the affects of the AC” as in, raise the temp and/or decrease the fan. It could definitely be ambiguous, but almost never will be, in context.
The writers used it that way because that’s what it means. I’m shocked by the poll results because 100% of the time I’ve ever heard it used, “from” is the current location and “by way of” has indicated the birthplace. Is it just not a common expression?
It means quarter to. I don’t understand how it could be interpreted otherwise given there’s no definition of “of” that means after, but you’re far from alone in being confused by this New England construction. If it helps, in this construct “of” means before (def. 11b. “after” is also listed as an antonym, ftr)
According to you and the Mad Men and *Nashville *writers, but only 20% of the respondents here. And I was with the 80% originally, although now that I’ve thought about it so much, I can see it both ways.
I do agree with you about the “three points” idea though. Which is why I objected to the way it was used on Nashville, which originally spurred me to comment. A singer was on stage in Seattle and said “I’m from Nashville, by way of Natchez, Mississippi”. But I knew the character lived in Nashville at that time and was on tour, but had grown up in Natchez. So to me, she should have said “I’m from Natchez, Mississippi, by way of Nashville”, meaning “I started in Natchez, was in Nashville as an intermediate way station, and am here before you now”. Does that make sense with your “three points” paradigm?
I think you may be hitting on something here. I wonder if I, and the 80 percent answering on the poll, are not really part of the linguistic zone where this is used. So we find it a little ambiguous but still see a logical interpretation that is the opposite of how it used by people who actually say this (but who should stop saying it, because they are confusing the rest of us).
So let me ask this of those who voted with the majority: do any of you use this expression yourself, or hear it used regularly in your region? Or is it that the 20 percent represent those who are familiar with it, and the 80 percent those unfamiliar, or who only encounter it rarely and are not necessarily aware that they did not actually correctly receive the information about where the person was born?
And elfkin, you asked if it is “just not a common expression”. Is it common where you live? It definitely has a “country” or “folksy” vibe about it, I’d say; so I doubt if it’s common in the urban Northeast or West Coast, where most of the population lives.
Agree about “quarter of”.
I don’t know that the AC thing is almost never ambiguous in context. There have been many times that I’ve been in a room with my wife and one of us wants it cooler and the other not as cool–and it’s not always the same direction of disparity. Maybe that’s weird, but I think it has something to do with whether one of us has been cooking or just came from outside.
But so if the statement is simply made as “could you turn the AC down please?” that does cause confusion. Add to that the fact that one of our window units uses digital temperature numbers, and the other has a manual dial with 1-9 numbers (with 9 being coldest), and it’s even more confusing.
I chose the first choice assuming the speaker was now living in a third location that was neither Chicago nor Seattle. If the speaker is to be living in one or the other of those two cities, I wouldn’t expect that phrase to be used.
I think it’s clear that no one would use this expression and include a city they were in at the moment they are speaking. But I think they could be temporarily away from home (as with the singer on tour), or they could have moved to some third place, either one.
When I first heard it (or read it, in this case, many decades ago) there was no further context that explained it to me, so I was mystified. Same for the next time I heard it. But eventually I got enough information to figure out it meant “to.” But then the very next time I saw it used, I swear the context was unambiguously that it meant “quarter after” and ever since then I have hated the stupid phrase.
If what you say is true, that particular instance must have been a mistake (either my misreading of the context, or their misunderstanding of the term) but it was enough for me to shake my fist and shout “Argh!” to the sky.