Demonym

demonym, term which refers to a person or group of people living in or from a specific place. Rooted in the Greek words dēmos, which refers to an administrative division or its people, and onyma, meaning “name,” the term alludes to the nomenclature of the ancient Athenians who were named according to the deme in which they lived.

The term was popularized by author Paul Dickson in 1990 in What Do You Call a Person from…? A Dictionary of Resident Names, where he cited Briton, Liverpudlian, and Parisienne as prominent examples. He attributes the coinage, however, to George H. Scheetz’s Names’ Names: A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon, published two years earlier.

In English, demonyms are capitalized and are typically formed by adding a suffix to a location. A number of words are suffixed with -an, as occurs with Asian, Indian, or Zimbabwean, or -ish, in the case of British, Irish, or Scottish. Some end in-ese, like Japanese or Portuguese. Demonyms can also end in -er, as occurs with New Zealander and Londoner; -ite, in the case of Sydneyite or Perthite; or -i, as in Qatari or Israeli. Sometimes a letter or group of letters is replaced, as occurs with Cypriot for an inhabitant of Cyprus or Argentine for an inhabitant of Argentina. Certain demonyms take a longer suffix, such as Sydneysider for an inhabitant of the Australian city, while some, such as Thai for a citizen of Thailand, involve truncation, since part of the word is removed. Of these categories, only the demonyms ending in -ish and -ese do not form plurals by the addition of -s.

Some demonyms involve internal change to the stem, as exemplified by Liverpudlian for someone from Liverpool, Monegasque for a citizen of Monaco, or Leopolitan for a resident of Lviv. In the singular form, demonyms occasionally include -man or -woman as a suffix, as occurs with Frenchman or Irishwoman, which can be pluralized by replacing the a with an e. Demonyms can also be loanwords, as seen with Agathois from French, Burqueño from Spanish, and Qatari from Arabic. In this context, some loaned demonyms are formed by changing the initial letters of the place in question. This occurs in some African countries, such as Botswana, where the singular demonym is Motswana and the plural is Batswana, or Lesotho, where Mosotho and Basotho are the singular and plural forms respectively.

Demonyms can be informal, such as Aussie for Australians, and some involve a significant etymological substitution. This is exemplified by the use of the terms Pinoy for Filipinos, Scousers for Liverpudlians, or Kiwis for New Zealanders, generally used with a positive connotation. Some informal demonyms are ethnic slurs and are thus considered offensive.

Adjectives and demonyms are not necessarily the same, as exemplified by Spanish rather than Spaniard, British instead of Briton, or Icelandic in lieu of Icelander. Certain locations have multiple demonyms, such as Belgrader and Belgradian for a citizen of the Serbian capital and Michigander and Michiganian for a resident of the U.S. state. Some have been considered controversial, as they could refer to multiple locations, as occurs with American, which is generally used to refer to a citizen of the United States but could also include other inhabitants of the North and South American continents. Similarly, the demonym Brit is commonly used to refer to any inhabitant of the United Kingdom, including an inhabitant of Northern Ireland, rather than solely the inhabitants of the island of Great Britain.

Demonyms differ from ethnonyms by focusing on place rather than ethnicity. As a result, while a Kazakh refers to a person belonging to an ethnic group, the demonym Kazakhstani refers to a citizen of the country. The same occurs, for instance, with Croat, an ethnonym, and Croatian, a demonym. The use of the same name can prompt ambiguity, as occurs with the term Macedonian, which as an ethnonym refers to people who identify as members of the Macedonian nation regardless of where they live and which as a demonym refers to people who inhabit the geographical region known as Macedonia, which includes territory that comprises parts of three states: the Republic of North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece.