Grammar confusion - Texas Girl vs. Texan girl?

You are correct. Strictly speaking, a girl from Texas should be identified as

- "Texan girl"

rather than

- "Texas girl"

However: newspaper headlines (and in general news headlines) typically do not follow strict rules of English grammar. It is a sort of "convention" that news headlines leave out "unnecessary" words that would be required for grammatical correctness but not required for meaning, and using the name of the state rather than the adjective is typical. The headline **implies**

- girl from Texas

but for the sake of brevity eliminates "from" and (to keep the message clear) reverses the two remaining words

- Texas girl

Conclusion: news headlines often do not use correct grammar, by convention, for the sake of brevity

One is noun the other is an adjective or used as one.

Hey everyone,

I got confused once more with the English language. I've just stumbled over an article:

http://www.newsfrenzy.com/articles/127/20140903/te...

It's the headline that confuses me. It ought to say Texan girl instead of Texas girl in my opinion. I could imagine that you could say Texas girl in the meaning of a girl clothed and styled in a Texan way, thus being a zeugma for Texas-style(d) girl. But as far as I understood they actually referred to a real Texas born girl. And since I do expect natives wrote that article, I thought I'd better ask if I am wrong in some way.

Texas girl

American president

German shepherd