Demonym

A demonym or gentilic is a word that denotes the members of a people or the inhabitants of a place. In English, the name of a people's language is often the same as this word, e.g., the "French" (language or people). Some places, particularly smaller cities and towns may not have an established word for their residents; toponymists have a particular challenge in researching these. See also ethnonym.

Suffix demonyms

The English language uses several models to create demonyms. The most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location's name. These may be modelled after Late Latin, Semitic or Germanic suffixes, such as:

• -an (America → American, Rome → Roman, Singapore → Singaporean)
• -ian (Toronto → Torontonian, Paris → Parisian, Australia → Australian, Pegswood → Pegswardian)
• -ine (Argentina → Argentine, Florence, Latin Florentia → Florentine)
• -ite (Vancouver → Vancouverite, Moscow → Muscovite), (Brisbane → Brisbanite) (mostly cities)
• -er (London → Londoner, Sheffield → Sheffielder) (mostly cities)
• -eno (Los Angeles → Angeleno or Los Angeleno, derived from the standard Spanish eño suffix for demonyms)
• -ish (Spain → Spanish, Denmark → Danish) (mostly countries)
  • "-ish" is usually only proper as an adjective. Thus many common "-ish" forms have irregular demonyms. (Spain/Spanish/Spaniard; Denmark/Danish/Dane; Judea/Jewish/Jew or Judean; Poland/Polish/Pole)
• -ese (Taiwan → Taiwanese, Vienna → Viennese, the Tyrol → Tyrolese)
  • "-ese" is also usually only proper as an adjective, or to refer to the entirety. Thus, "the Chinese person" is the singular, "the Chinese people" is the small-number plural, and "the Chinese" refers to the government of China, or to the group of all people of Chinese ancestry.
  • Used mostly for East Asian and Francophone locations, from the similar-sounding French suffix -ais(e), which is originally from the Latin adjectival ending -ensis, designating origin from a place: thus Hispaniensis (Spanish), Danensis (Danish), etc.
• -i (Iraq → Iraqi, Bengal → Bengali) (mostly Middle Eastern and South Asian locales)
• -i (Allemanni, Helvetii) (Latinate plural ending applied to the many peoples they encountered)
• -ic (Hispania → Hispanic, Turk → Turkic (cf. Turkish)) (a Latinate suffix widely used outside ethnonyms (e.g., chemical compounds) which with regard to people is mostly used adjectivally (Semite vs. Semitic, Arab/Arabian vs. Arabic) to refer to a wider ethnic or linguistic group (Turkic vs. Turkish, Finnic vs. Finnish)).
• -iote (Cyprus → Cypriote, Phanar → Phanariote), especially for Greek locations.

Irregular forms

In some cases, both the location's name and the demonym are produced by suffixation, for example England and English and English(wo)man (derived from the Angle tribe). In some cases the derivation is concealed enough that it is no longer morphemic: France → French.

A native of Halifax is called a Haligonian for reasons unclear to many residents, prompting confusion, noted uncommonly in various articles mistaking them as Halifaxians. However residents of the Halifax Regional Municipality are not considered Haligonian because the term was not adopted outside the community of Halifax. However a native of Dartmouth Nova Scotia which is within the Halifax Regional Municipality is called a Dartmouthian. A native of Colchester, UK is called a Colcestrian, without the h present in the name of the town. Another example is the name of the natives of Pegswood in Northumberland, England, which is 'Pegswardian', another irregular demonym. Inhabitants of some other English towns have demonyms derived from their archaic Latin names, such as Manchester - Mancunian. Similarly, a native of Melbourne, Victoria is a Melburnian, from the (very) Late Latin "Melburnensis".

Often the singular name for one of the people is the base form, and the country name, if it exists, is derived therefrom (Switzer (an archaic word for Swiss) → Switzerland, Arab → Arabia, Croat → Croatia, Dane → Denmark, Teuton).

In a few cases, demonyms are recent borrowings from other languages or adapted in a process of linguistic mutation where English demonyms are similar to those of other languages (Kosovo → Kosovan (English demonym) → Kosovar (Albanian demonym also used in English), Bosnian Muslim → Bosniak (based on the Bosnian demonym Bošnjak)).

In a few cases, the name of the country is not at all related to the name of the people (Netherlands → Dutch), usually because the two words originate from different languages. Or in this example, English uses a term derived from Middle Dutch (Dietsch) which is considered archaic in the contemporary Dutch language (see Netherlands (terminology)).

In the case of Canadian provinces and territories and U.S. states, it is non-standard to use demonyms as attributive adjectives (for example "Manitoba maple", not "Manitoban maple"); they can be used only predicatively ("Ben Franklin was Pennsylvanian") or substantively ("Texans tend to vote Republican.")

In the case of someone from Newcastle, the term Novocastrian is used.

In the case of someone from Sydney in New South Wales, it is standard to use the demonym Sydneysider.

Demonyms can be nouns or adjectives. In many cases the noun and adjective forms are the same (Canadian/Canadian); in other cases they are different (Spaniard/Spanish, Slovene/Slovenian, Flemings/Flemish).

In some of the latter cases the noun is formed by adding -man or -woman (English/Englishman/Englishwoman, the obsolete Chinese/Chinaman/Chinawoman).

An inhabitant of the U.S. state of Michigan is commonly known as a Michigander.

It is generally held that a native of Western Australia is a West Australian, the rationale possibly being that a qualifier within an adjectival phrase is better expressed as an appositional noun. The currency of “West Australian” is supported by the existence of a major newspaper of the same name.

Double forms

Some regions and populaces also have double forms, as the concepts of nation and state are diverging once more. Hence, one whose genetic ancestors were from Britain is a Briton, whereas one with a passport from the country is considered British. The Franks settled France, but the citizens are French. This may be the case for states which were formed or dissolved relatively recently.

• Greek gods but Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Norse gods but Norwegian
• Israelite but Israeli

Due to the flexibility of the international system, the opposite is often also true, where one word might apply to multiple groups. The U.S. Department of State states that 98% of the Austrian population is ethnically German [1], while the CIA World Factbook contradicts this by saying Austrians are a separate group (see Various terms used for Germans). A child born in the United States to a Turkish family would be considered American, both by law, and by much of the general populace; however if the child had been born in Germany, the law, and many of the people, would consider him a Turk. Some countries go so far as to explicitly recognize a difference between citizenship and nationality, e.g. Russia.

In fiction

Literature and science have created a wealth of demonyms that are not directly associated with a cultural group, such as Martian for hypothetical people of Mars (credited to scientist Percival Lowell), Earthling (from the diminutive -ling, ultimately from Old English -ing meaning 'descendant') as a possible name for the people of Earth (as also "Terran" and "Terrene" and "terrestrial"), and Lilliputians from the island of Lilliput in the satire Gulliver's Travels.

Cultural problems

Some peoples, especially cultures that were overwhelmed by European colonists, have no commonly accepted demonym, or have a demonym that is the same as the name of their (current or historical) nation. Examples include Iroquois, Aztec, Māori, and Czech. Such peoples' native languages often have differentiated forms that simply did not survive the transfer to English. In Czech, for example, the language is Čeština, the nation is Česko or Česká republika, and the people are Češi.

The demonym for citizens of the United States of America suffers a similar problem, because "American" ambiguously refers to both the USA and to the American continent. United Statian is awkward in English, but it exists in Spanish (estadounidense), French (étatsunien(ne)), Portuguese (estado-unidense or estadunidense), Italian (statunitense), and also in Interlingua (statounitese). US American (for the noun) and US-American (when used as a compound modifier preceding a noun) is another option, and is a common demonym in German (US-Amerikaner). Latin Americans (who are the most affected by this use of American) also have yanqui (Yankee) and the euphemism norteamericano/norte-americano (North American, which includes the USA, Mexico, Canada, and several other countries). Frank Lloyd Wright proposed Usonian, similar to the Esperanto adjective usona (from Usono, the name for the country). In the spirit of Sydneysider, Statesider is also a possibility. See main article: Use of the word American.

See also

• List of adjectival forms of place names
• -onym, especially ethnonym and Exonym and endonym
• Alphabetical list of world demonyms
• Demonyms of the World