What is the demonym of someone from the Vatican City? Vaticonian?
According to the CIA World Factbook, there isn’t any.
Vatican City is lacking a few key traits common to almost every other country, most notable among these is a permanent population and/or birth rate. Nobody is born a citizen of Vatican CIty, nobody emigrates there except as a function of their job, and I imagine very few people willingly die there. It’s more like an embassy than a country.
Still, if you really want a demonym for the people of Vatican city, Catholic would be most appropriate, since it is the capitol/headquarters of their church. Part of the definition of being Catholic (their official dogma) is an acknowledgement that the church (and through it, the pope) speaks for God/Christ*.
*cite: The Nicene Creed
Pope.
That’s a bit like saying the demonym for residents of Utah is Mormon.
While the people of Vatican City may be Catholics, not all Catholics are residents/citizens of Vatican City. A demonym indicates a resident or native of a locality. It wouldn’t be appropriate to use a term that isn’t limited to residents (or people who originated there) as a demonym.
Vaticanan? Vaticani?
Vaticano?
Vaticanese?
Vaticadian?
Holy Seeite.
Different web sites give different numbers . . . but it looks like there are about 450 persons who are both citizens of and resident in the Vatican, 350 people who are residents but not citizens, and another 150 people (mostly diplomats) who are citizens but not residents.
These categories include the Pope, some but not all cardinals, some lower clergy, the Swiss Guards, and a few lay administrators and their families.
There is no accepted English-language descriptor for these people other than what I have just said–citizens of, or residents in, the Vatican. All were born elsewhere and became citizens and/or residents solely by virtue of their jobs. They aren’t referred to as a group that often. They don’t have much in common with each other.
So call them Vaticanians if you want, but don’t expect the world to follow.
aren’t they VC?
They don’t have demonym, they have angelyms.
People in Kansas City call themselves Kansas Citians. That’s good enough for me, by analogy, and I will use Vatican Citian without fear until somebody convinces me that it is correctly something else.
Meanwhile, by what demonyms to the people of Republic of Congo distinguish themselves from the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Fact: the Vatican City has 5.9 Popes per square mile or 2.3 Popes per square kilometer, or double that if Benedict is around.
Bloody Congo and Bloodier Congo.
Seriously though, the RoC (RdC) can be referred to as Congo-Brazzaville, or the former French Congo. RDC (DRC) can be referred to as Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, or the former Belgian Congo. These refer to their respective capitals and former colonial powers.
He’s not a category, he’s the Pope!
More importantly, is Roland still there helping them out?
This reminds me of a line from the Naked Scientists podcast I was listening to earlier; one of the panelists had calculated the molarity of whales in the ocean. It was in the 10^-38 range, so the oceans are a very dilute solution of whales indeed. Perhaps someone could do the math to see how concentrated a solution of Popes Vatican City is?
As to the question itself, which seems to have been definitively non-answered by now, I’ll say that I’m fond of Vaticaner for some reason, probably by pronunciation analogy to Afrikaaner.
Why not Vatican Citizen?
“An Italian, a Vatican Citizen, and a San Marinese walk into a bar.”
The word is Vaticanista. But it means someone who works at the Vatican. A Vaticanista may or may not be a Vatican citizen, and he almost certainly doesn’t live there. Nearly all Vaticanistas live in Rome. He may work in Rome, too, but for an agency established in the Vatican.
As others have pointed out, nobody is from the Vatican; all Vatican citizens are citizens by naturalisation, and virtually all Vatican residents have moved there from somewhere else. Most Vatican citizens live outside the Vatican. And while a small number of people live in the Vatican, most of those who do are not Vatican citizens - only the most senior Vatican posts carry Vatican citizenship.
Has anyone actually been born in the Vatican? (In modern times, that is, not during the Papal States or anything like that…)
It wouldn’t give them citizenship, since you can’t be born Vatican citizen. And it would have to have been a visitor who gave birth unexpectedly and was unable to get to a hospital.
From here:
Interestingly, the Vatican has the world’s highest per capita crime rate.
Buggerer?
Fugitive