Demonym
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A demonym or gentilic is a word that denotes the members of a people or the inhabitants of a place. Often the name of a people's language is 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.
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[edit] 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)
- -ian (Paris → Parisian, Hamburg → Hamburgian)
- -ine (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)
- -ish (Spain → Spanish, Denmark → Danish) (mostly countries)
- -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, Hispanic vs. Spanish, Finnic vs. Finnish)).
- -iote (Cyprus → Cypriote, Phanar → Phanariote), especially for Greek locations.
[edit] 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, Nova Scotia is called a Haligonian for reasons unclear to many residents, prompting confusion, noted uncommonly in various articles mistaking them as Halifaxians.
A native of Colchester, UK is called a Colcestrian, without the h present in the name of the town.
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 Sydney in New South Wales, it is standard to use the demonym Sydneysider for disambiguation.
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).
[edit] 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, and Lilliputians from the island of Lilliput in the satire Gulliver's Travels.
[edit] 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.
Although many English-speakers are not aware of it, the demonym for citizens of the United States of America suffers a similar problem when translated into many foreign languages, because "American" ambiguously refers to both the USA and to the two American continents. United Statian is awkward in English, but it exists in Spanish (estadounidense), French (étatsunien(ne)), Portuguese (estado-unidense or estadunidense) and also in Italian (statunitense). 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 itself conflates 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, Stateside is also a possibility. See main article: Use of the word American.
