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It's a weird word. I myself didn't know what it meant before this
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A demonym is a noun used to denote the natives or inhabitants of a particular country, state
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city or a location in general. I am from Portugal so the demonym used is Portuguese
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If I were from the US the demonym used would be American
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So why is it like this? Why not Portugan or Americanese? In this video we're going to learn how demonyms work, their meaning and their origin
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It's important to make a disclaimer here, this video covers demonyms in the English language
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and they are obviously different in other languages. This map color codes the types of suffixes used in demonyms in English in Europe
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while this one does the same in Dutch. Not only are the demonyms themselves different, but the groups in which they are gathered are two
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For instance, in Portuguese, the demonym of a person from the United States can either be
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or Stadounidense, after Stadounid, the translation for United States. And the options for demonym suffixes across languages have to do with the respective grammars
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that they have, so in this video we will stick to English. Although some of the ones used in English borrow the word from another local language
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for instance, the demonym for Quebec is Quebecois, taken from the French
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In addition, we'll also only be covering national demonyms, I might just mention a couple of continental or city ones for example's sake
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Demonyms are interesting because they refer to geographically or territorially defined groups of people
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regardless of what their ethnicity or heritage is. A good example of this is British, which refers to the people geographically within the island of Great Britain
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even though the country is called the United Kingdom. Britain is used in alternative, showing us a place can have multiple demonyms
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and of course the constituent countries then have their own, English, Scottish, Welsh
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Often, demonyms are the same as the adjectival form of the place they refer to
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Examples of this are Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek, and this is a good way of thinking of it
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The same way that if you bought a teapot from Japan, you would say, I bought this Japanese teapot, using that adjective because of the origin of the object
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the demonym kind of works in the same way, but for people. In fact, the etymology of the word demonym is precisely this, from the Greek demos, meaning people, and onuma, meaning name
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So, now that we've understood some of the basic concepts of what a demonym is, how do they work
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The construction of a demonym is usually done with a place name plus a suffix at the end of it
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Most of the suffixes used for demonyms in English are taken from either Latin, Semitic, Celtic, or Germanic suffixes
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Before we get into more detail, let's take a worldwide view of what suffixes are used
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When searching about this, I found this great map made by reddit user fargrass
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that shows us the eight main types of demonym suffixes divided by color
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In yellow are other types often unique ones Let take a look at these before the general view The unique suffixes are listed as the following French for France Dutch for the Netherlands Czech for Czechia
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although some people claim these three are actually the same, ending in CH. Swiss for
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Switzerland, Kosovar for Kosovo, Montenegrin for Montenegro, Nigerian for Niger, Malagasy for Madagascar, Botswana for Botswana, not using a prefix in these two cases, Burkina
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for Burkina Faso, Kyrgyz for Kyrgyzstan, and Filipino with an F for the Philippines
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due to the Spanish heritage that the place has. Cyprus isn't even marked yellow, but it also has
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a unique demonym, Cypriot. Now let's get back to the full map, as we see a lot of demonym suffixes
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are used for many countries, in blue, Ian, Canadian, Brazilian, Argentinian, Norwegian
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I believe from a first look at the map that this suffix is the most common across the world
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There is also a very similar one depicted here in pink, which is EN but with an E instead
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of an I. It sounds the same when read out loud. Chilean, Eritrean, Belizean are examples of it, perhaps because the country name itself
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ends with an E and so it wouldn't make sense to use an I after it for the suffix
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Korea is also an example, ending with EA already, so just adding the N to it
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Another often used demonym suffix is the one shown in green, n, very similar to the previous
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one but removing the i, americane, mexican, german, German could be germanic but that
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seems to refer to the ethnic group and not the group of people from the country reinforcing
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the difference between the two. Some people in the comments of the map posts pointed out that India for instance already
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has an i so it should be in green too or a special category of an n suffix
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Then we have the one in red, Ys, used for instance in Chinese or Portuguese
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The one in purple is also fairly common, simply adding an I, such as Iraqi, Omani, Yemeni
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Pakistani, although adding Thai in this category seems a bit of a stretch considering that the
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I is already there in the country's English name, Thailand. And also the one in turquoise, Ish, which is used for Spanish, British, Irish, Swedish
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Danish, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, although all of these are examples of countries with
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alternative demonyms too, Spaniard, Britain, Swede, Dane, Pole, Turk, or Finn, but again
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these could refer to the ethnicity. Suffixless demonym alternatives like these seem to also come directly from their local
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languages, reinforcing their connection to the ethnicity. In fact they depict an opposite situation where the demonym doesn't come from the place
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name but the place name was chosen due to the name of the ethnic group or tribe
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It's also interesting to see how a lot of suffixes are kind of exclusive to certain
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areas of the world. The "-ish", for instance, seem to only be used for some countries from Europe while
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the "-i", is only used for countries in this portion of Asia plus Somalia and Israel
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This has to do with our origin as we will see ahead In light blue we have the suffix used exclusively for Greenland and Iceland I thought the criteria was because they were the only countries whose English name ends with land
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but then I realized, of course, they're not. There's also Finland, Ireland, Poland, Somaliland
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We'll get to the criteria for demonym suffixes in a minute. And finally, the last category
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"-er", used for Luxemburger and New Zealander. This map also only covers the demonym suffix seen
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as the main one. For Slovakian for instance, Slovak is also widely used and other examples
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of multiple demonyms for a single country exist. Argentina is another one with Argentine vs Argentinian
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Azerbaijan with Azerbaijani vs Azeri, Hungary with Hungarian vs Magyar, Nepal with Nepali vs Nepalese
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Saudi Arabia with Saudi vs Saudi Arabian or Slovenia with Slovenian vs Slovene
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So, now we've understood what demonyms are, which the main suffixes used for them are
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and which countries they are used for. But how are they chosen? Either in English or another
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language, what determines the way in which the demonym is constructed? In 99% of cases
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the structure seems to be the name of the country or an adapted version of it, plus a suffix
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That's understandable enough. But how do they choose each suffix? I think in some cases it
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it definitely has to do with what the name of the country is in English
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We saw this with the I-A-N versus E-A-N variation. In some cases, it just wouldn't make sense to add certain suffixes to certain country names
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because it would render the pronunciation of it too complicated. But still, this definitely doesn't apply to all cases
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Canadian could very well be Canadish, that doesn't sound too strange. French could be Francine, and Australian could be Australic
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So, why? The unfortunate answer is that there seemingly is no answer
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There's no set rule for which type of place name gets a specific type of demonym
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or specific suffixes for specific demonyms. The only categorization we are able to make
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other than grouping up countries by the type of suffix, is to divide those suffixes by origin
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I found, demonyms ending with the suffix "-ish", are of Germanic origin
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usually the oldest ones, used for countries in Europe and sharing the same root as ish in German, which themselves use the demonyms Irish, Scottish
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Danish, and Turkish. ER seems to be of Germanic origin as well, they still use it too, for instance for local
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demonyms Berlinet. The suffixes an, ian, or ease tend to be derived from Latin, I believe ian with a e is a variation
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of ian with a i so it would also be included here. The reason why seems to be that English names for non-English speaking places are often
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Latin derived, Italian, Croatian, Arabian and sometimes there's an indirect link to
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Latin through the later developed Romance languages of Portuguese or French which created
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their own demonyms for places they explored or ruled through their colonies
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This seems especially true for the Ease demonym Vietnamese for instance, although in French
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this is Vietnamian or Chinese or Japanese which seem to come from the Portuguese Chinese or Japoonish given that they were among the first Europeans to establish contact with these regions and depict them on modern maps
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For place names that end in a O or U and would use Ian, a V is added becoming for instance
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Oslovian or Peruvian. The suffix Ik comes from Greek as does ite which we'll mention in a second
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These are not often used and survive mostly through their usage in the Bible, through
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the reference of tribes in the Old Testament, then being applied in modern cases
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And the suffix i seems to be derived or at least influenced by Persian, justifying its
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usage in the region. In Iran, many surnames are formed by adding i to the name of a person or place, so Husseini
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is a child of Hussein. While continents seem to share the same type of suffixes as countries do in their ademonyms
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Countries though seem to have some exclusive ones. For instance the ER suffix exclusive to the English demonym of Luxembourg is fairly common
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among cities. New Yorker, Londoner, as is Ian, Parisian. And when that one isn't used, the suffix ITE is often used, one that is not used at
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all by countries but a lot by cities. Vancouverite for instance. English borrows many of its demonyms for other non-English speaking countries from these
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other languages, Latin, Romance languages, Germanic, Persian, and so, while demonyms vary from language to language, there are some bridges in between them that connect
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them and provide some similarities. In summary, demonyms are the name we give to describe the people from a specific place
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either a continent, country, region, or city. They are, in almost all cases, constructed by using or adapting the place name and then
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adding a suffix to it. The type of suffix chosen varies, it can be ich, ian, i, is, en, ite, among others, and
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it seems that the criteria for its selection is essentially non-existent. If there are any criteria, they seem to be what the place name is, also known as toponym
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and which suffixes work, slash, fit into the word adequately, and also what the origin
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of the native, or at least first demonym suffixes are. In the cases where they are of Germanic origin, ish is used, if they were of Latin origin
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or ease, or if they were for instance Persian, I. This isn't a simple topic and the explanation can
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at times be confusing, but I believe in this video I attempted to summarize the main points of it
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understanding what a demonym is, what it's used for, how it's constructed, how it is potentially
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chosen, and above all allowing us to learn a little about which demonyms are used, at least
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in English, and for which countries. Do you know any additional information about this? Did you
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notice any mistakes on my part and are demonyms in English very different from the ones in your
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native language? Let me know in the comments. Thanks so much for watching this video
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subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for more general knowledge
