What do you call a person from ?

It seems like a simple question, and it's a common one too. As a geography teacher I was often asked what you called a person from a country we might have been investigating. It's not always as obvious as we'd like, and it would help if everywhere followed the same rules, but of course the English language is well known for being a little eccentric at times :-)

For example, with most countries ending with the letter 'a' you just need to add an 'n' to the end of the country name to create the name for it's citizens. Thus a person from Angola is an Angolan, a person from Cuba is a Cuban and a person from Russia is a Russian.

But just as you get the hang of it, you discover that a person from China isn't a Chinan , but is Chinese, and people from Croatia are Croats, not Croatians.

And then, of course, there are silly confusions such as people from Malta are NOT Maltesers (a sweet) , they are Maltese, and people from Scotland are Scots, not Scotch (a strong alcoholic drink)

Geographers call the word that describes where somebody comes from a DEMONYM (pronounced demo - nim) and we tend to use them quite a lot. Listen to the news, read a paper or just chat on MSN or IRC and you will see / hear plenty of demonyms.

History students should remember though, that country names as well as ways of referring to their inhabitants have changed frequently throughout history and what we call people today ,from for example Uganda, is not what they would have been called 300 years ago when Uganda didn't even exist as a British Protectorate.

So, here's a list showing the most generally accepted demonyms in use today, arranged alphabetically by country.