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