Eli5: What determines if a nationality ends with -ese (chinese, japanese…), -an (Ghanian, Egyptian, American) or just the county itself (Thai)?
In: 4879
Nationalities that end with “-ese” and “-an” were given it by European explorers who needed something they could pronounce to call the natives. Countries that have the suffix “-ese” were originally visited by Italian, Portuguese, or French explorers where this sort of suffix is common in their language, such as the Portuguese word “chinês” or even the word “Português” itself. When adopted into English, it became “-ese.”
Whereas countries with the suffix “-an” were discovered by explorers who did not speak languages that commonly had suffixes like “-ese” in their language.
EDIT 1 (Thank you to VeritasCicero for this insight):
As for “Thai,” originally the country was called “Siam” and the nationality was called “Siamese.” They became known as “Thai” of their own volition, and that is the name we started calling them as well. It stands to reason that other irregular nationality names may follow this trend.
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What you’re describing are exonyms—i.e., the name given to a country or people by foreign speakers. Common suffixes used in English exonyms, which all have the same basic meaning of “of or related to,” are:
* -ish (from the old Germanic *-iskaz*, like German -isch)
* -ese (from the Latin *-ensis*, like French -aise)
* -ic (from the Latin *-icus*, like Spanish -igo)
* -an (from the Latin *-anus/-ana*, like Italian -ano/-ana)
* -i (from the Arabic *-iyy*)
You’d think there’d be a consistent pattern, like “if an exonym ends in -ish, it’s root is a German word, and if it ends in -ese, its root is a Latin word,” right? Wrong. It wouldn’t be English if it weren’t confusing and didn’t have more exceptions than rules. For instance, although Spain has roots in a Latin word (*Hispania*), its exonym is “Spanish.”
As for the origins of the exonyms themselves, they can also vary wildly. Some borrow the local endonyms (i.e., how the people refer to themselves), others are from prominent landmarks or geology, and some are the results of a millennia-long game of telephone. Here are some of the more interesting ones:
* China: believed to be from *Qin* (pronounced “chin”), the first dynasty to unify China
* Greece: from the Latin exonym for Greece, *Graecia*, which comes from the legendary founder of an ancient Greek tribe
* Egypt: from the ancient Greek *Aigyptos*, which is based on the Egyptian name for one of their cities
* India: from the Indus river, called the *Sindhu* in Sanskrit (also the root of the word “Hindu”)
* America: from the name of Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
* Canada: from the Iroquoian *kanata*, meaning “village”
* Palestine: from the Latin *Palestina*, from the name for the Pelesheth/Philistines
I always assume it depended on the last letter of the original word .
Hawaiian and thai is interesting difference. Most do end in -an though it seems the older the european country the different it is. British, french, belgium, swiss, ect.
Curious how latin and ancient greek did it. Hebrew as i recall put -im plural on end of country name for the people
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Short answer: The rules aren’t consistent, its decided based on if it sounds clunky or not.
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