The English language is full of curiosities. For nearly every rule, there are exceptions. There are plenty of suffixes and prefixes, some which mean almost (if not exactly) the same thing, not all of which are used universally. Why is something impossible instead of unpossible? Last night at a family dinner, someone asked what sort of coffee we were having. Being simple people, the options were caffeinated or decaffeinated (I'm writing this in Word, and caffeinated is not in the dictionary, but decaffeinated is. Interesting). Being silly, I said "Morrocan. Or how about Antarctica... uh..."

After stumbling over that, I got to thinking about the suffixes we apply when referring to countries (Research tells me Antarctica is not a country). For example, I live in Australia, therefore I am Australian. If you live in Indonesia, you are Indonesian. Aha! A pattern! If your country ends in 'ia', just add an 'n'. Looking at a list of countries, this seems to hold true. Until you get to Slovakia. They're Slavik (although I'm pretty sure Slovakian is commonly used). You'd think people from Somalia were Somalians, but they're Somali's (again, I think Somalian is commonly used).

A similar rule applies to some countries that just end in 'a', but without an 'i' preceding it. People from Jamaica are Jaimaican. People from either Korea are Korean. People from Kenya are Kenyan. So how about those Burman people? What do you mean people from Burma are called Burmese? Similarly, people from Malta are Maltese, not Maltans. And nobody would know what you are talking about if you were referring to a Chinan.

There are some countries that end in 'land'. People from Ireland are called Irish. Sounds fair; drop the 'land', add 'ish'. Well, perhaps we will add another 'n' when we convert Finland to Finnish. And we'll keep the 'l' for the Polish; Poish just sounds silly. Let's get lazy, drop 'land' and add nothing to the people who come from Thailand. Heck let's do the same with Somaliland (yes, the same title as those from Somalia). People from Scotland are called Scots (although I think Scottish is regularly used). People from New Zealand are called New Zeaish... I mean New Zealanders. So let's start adding 'er' then, shall we? So someone from Scotland must be called a Scotlander (Scot), from Iceland an Icelander (Icelandic) , and Greenland a Greenlander (Greenlandic), right?

While those three groups form the more common endings for countries (those ending with 'ia', 'a' and 'land'), there are a bunch of other countries that have different endings, making it hard to decipher what their people might be called if you don't already know. Some common known ones are Norwegians from Norway (no other country ends in 'way'), Spanish stuff comes from Spain (but people from Spain are Spaniards), and Israel is the home of Israeli. Turns out this brief research shows my ignorance; I thought Holland and the Netherlands were two different countries, but North Holland and South Holland are two provinces in the Netherlands. A common mistake apparently; I wonder why that is? Nevertheless, what are people from the Netherlands called? Nope, not Nethers or Netherians. They are Dutch. That one throws all naming conventions out the window.

If this interests you at all, you can have a look at a list of countries on this wikipedia page. See how many you know or can guess correctly. Most listings for countries in wikipedia have a demonym listing in the information panel on the right (what you call the people from that country). I also found this, which is a list someone has created if you just want to browse. If you can't be bothered with a link, here are a few tough ones you might want to attempt:
Chile
Bangladesh
Botswana
Cyprus
Laos
Mozambique
Turkmenistan
Vanuatu

This also got me thinking about terms used to describe things from different planets. As far as I can tell, things from Mars are Martian, things from Mercury are Mercurian, things from Saturn are Saturnian, things from Pluto are Plutonian... but what do we refer to things from Earth? I've never heard of anything called Earthian, that's for sure. I think Terran is the most popular term; looks like our exceptions in language are everywhere.