Like for example, why do we say things like Scottish, Saudi Arabian and Japanese and not things like Japanian, Arabish or Scottese?
Bonus points if somebody can point a reason why a lot of these suffixes are pretty consistent to their world regions? Many European countries refer to their people as ___ish, many Asian countries as ___ese and many Middle Eastern countries as ____ian?
Thanks!!
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It’s been asked several times already. Here’s an excellent explanation on another sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/s/t4BVFapPy0
What you’re describing are known as demonyms, AKA words for a people or nation. The names can come from a lot of different sources:
* -ish has Germanic roots, and is generally used to describe place names that the English have known about since the Early Middle Ages, when the English language had a far more Germanic vocabulary.
* -ese comes from Latin via French, and has a lot of cognates in Romance languages like Portuguese or Italian. The reason a lot of East Asian names use this (Chinese, Japanese, etc.) is because a lot of explorers and travelers to East Asia were Portuguese, and the names entered English via reports from Portugal.
* -an and -ian come from Latin, so they’re generally used to describe names that either come from Latin, or are at least pseudo-Latin sounding.
* -ic also comes from Latin, and is also used to describe place names with Greek or Latin roots. Why do some use -ic while some use -ian? Probably because that’s what the Romans did and we just copied that.
* -ite comes from ancient Greek via Latin. It’s uncommon nowadays, and generally only sees use today as a deliberate neologism (e.g., “Brooklynite”).
* -i comes from words adopted from Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic (Israeli, Omani, etc.).
And then there are a lot of exceptions, generally because we adopted the word straight from another language and didn’t change it too much (e.g., “Greek” coming from Latin *graecus*).
And the specific origins of unique demonyms for places:
* **Greek:** From Latin “Graecus.”
* **French:** From Old English “Frencisċ” (Frankish). The -isċ also evolved into the modern English -ish.
* **Michigander:** Deliberate pun on the word “gander” (as in a male goose).
* **Norwegian:** From the medieval Latin name for Norway, “Norvegia.”
* **Glaswegian:** A pun by the people of Glasgow based on “Galwegian,” which itself was a pun by the people of Galway based on “Norwegian.”
* **Haligonian:** Based on a legend that the town of Halifax’s Old English name as “halig feax” (holy hair).
* **Corfiot:** Based on the word “Cypriot,” from the Greek Κυπριώτης (*Kupriótis*), to describe someone from Cyprus. Ironically enough, not used in Greek, because the Greek name of the island of Corfu is Kerkyra.
There’s also some that are completely off the wall. Yeah Pennsylvanian or Texan make sense, but a person from Indiana? A Hoosier.
Poor Purdue kids.
Why are people from Canada called ‘Canadians’ instead of ‘Canadans’? They don’t live in Canadia.
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