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Comments on Why are there different suffixes for people of different countries in English?

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Why are there different suffixes for people of different countries in English?

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I never thought about it too much until now, but in Hebrew, the only suffix, if I'm not mistaken, to refer to a person from a country is to add the letter Yod to the end of the name of the country (and another Tav or Heh after the Yod for females). For example, someone from Sin (China) is a Sini (סיני), someone from Russia is a Russi (רוסי), someone from Anglia (England) is an Angli (אנגלי) and so forth.

However, in English there are different suffixes. A person from Finland is Finn-ish (or a Finn) while a person from China is Chin-ese. Someone from America is an America-n while someone from Israel is an Israel-i. Why the difference? How is this determined?

English suffix
posted about 4 years ago
4y ago
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Harel13‭
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General comments (4 comments)
General comments
Monica Cellio‭ wrote about 4 years ago
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And somebody from Germany is a German, i.e. the change removes rather than adds characters.

Harel13‭ wrote about 4 years ago
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@MonicaCellio, good point! I rest my case, English is an odd language... :D

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago
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@MonicaCellio In that case, the name for the country was formed from the name of the people, Latin "Germania" (land of the Germans) -> "Germany"

Lundin‭ wrote about 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago
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Btw French is about as inconsistent as English in this regard, and we shouldn't even mention the Nordic languages. I'm thinking most languages are fairly inconsistent here, with lots of different suffixes. Likely because in ancient days, they referred to a group of people before that group even formed a nation. And so the nation's name/nationality doesn't necessary add upp with the old name for that ethnic group. Take "Norse" as one such example.