Whence the -i in “Kuwati,” “Pakistani,” etc.?

[JKellyMap]

(My Googling was surprisingly unhelpful, even when I inserted the keyword “demonym”).

What is the origin of the suffix -i as an adjective for “a country or its
people”?

It’s used (at least in English) for SOME of the Arabic speaking world (Saudi, Iraqi, Yemeni…), plus Hebrew (Israeli), but not ALL of it (Moroccan, Egyptian, Lebanese…).

It’s also used for SOME of the Indo-Iranian (branch of IE) speaking world (for languages and regions, not just countries) (Hindi, Bengali, Azeri, Afghani), but not all of it (Persian/Iranian).

I’m guessing it’s a Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) suffix that was adopted into the languages of the Mughal empire…but ???

(If so, this sort of parallels how -stan for “country” spread from Indo-European — specifically, Old Persian — into Turkic regions like Kazakhstan).

[DPRK]

I do not know about Indo-European, but here is a wiki synopsis of the Arabic nisbah:

The nisba (اَلنِّسْبَة nisbah ) is a common suffix to form adjectives of relation or pertinence. The suffix is ـِيّ -iyy- for masculine and ـِيَّة -iyya(t)- for feminine gender (in other words, it is -iyy- and is inserted before the gender marker).

• لُبْنَانُ Lubnān(u) “Lebanon”
• لُبْنَانِيٌّ lubnāniyy(un) “Lebanese” (masculine nominative singular)
• لُبْنَانِيَّةٌ lubnāniyya(tun) “Lebanese” (feminine nominative singular)
• لُبْنَانِيُّونَ lubnāniyyūn(a) “Lebanese” (masculine nominative plural)
• لُبْنَانِيَّاتٌ lubnāniyyāt(un) “Lebanese” (feminine nominative plural)

A construct noun and nisbah -adjective is often equivalent to nominal composition in English and other languages (solar cell is equivalent to sun cell).

The feminine nisbah is often used in Arabic as a noun relating to concepts, most frequently corresponding to ones ending in -ism , with the masculine and feminine nisbah being used as adjectival forms of the concept-noun (e.g. -ist ) depending on agreement. Thus the feminine nisbah of اَلْاِشْتِرَاك al-ištirāk “partnership, cooperation, participation (definite)”, اَلْاِشْتِرَاكِيَّة al-ištirākiyyah is the Arabic word for “socialism,” and the word “socialist” (both as an adjective and as the term for one who believes in socialism) is اِشْتِرَاكِيّ ištirākiyy in the masculine and اِشْتِرَاكِيَّة ištirākiyyah in the feminine.

The Arabic nisbah has given rise to English adjectives of nationality for Arabic countries: Iraqi (from عِرَاقِيّ), Kuwaiti (from كُوَيْتِيّ), etc.

[JKellyMap]

Thank you. That’s surely it. (All that’s left is to confirm or refute my hunch about how it ended up in non-Arabic places like Pakistan and Punjab).

[DPRK]

Also why is it Iraqi, but Lebanese instead of Lebani or Lebanoni or whatever?

[JKellyMap]

Right. Maybe (in English) it’s about “former British colonial activities” vs. “former French ones”?

(In Arabic, the Lebanese DO call themselves the “Lebani”).

[DPRK]

@JKellyMap

(In Arabic, the Lebanese DO call themselves the “Lebani”).

Lebanoni (= a (male) person from Lebanon)

[MrDibble]

One possibility - is it that the -i ones tend to be more modern-named countries than the non-i-suffixed ones? So the -i ones were named when hewing closer to local names was actually of diplomatic concern. Whereas before, those places were all just part of “Arabia” or “India”

[Schnitte]

French influence, I guess. It’s libanais in French (based on the -ais ending that is quite common in that language). Lebanon became a French mandatory territory after WWI and, to this day, French has a strong position in cultural and intellectual life in the country.

[CookingWithGas]

@JKellyMap

but not ALL of it (…Egyptian

“Egypt” is the English word for the country. The Arabic word is Misr (مصر) and a male person from there is Misri (مصري).

[Babale]

Yes, in both Hebrew and Arabic, “thing that embodies these qualities/nationality” is communicated through the -i suffix. So in Hebrew you have Israeli, Yehudi (Jewish), Amerikai (American), Tzarfati (French), etc etc

“Am” means “nation” or “peoples”, so a folk song or tale that’s unattributed to a specific author is described as “Amami”.

Etc etc

[alovem]

Spanish does it, too, with an accented i at the end: israelí, marroquí, catarí, iraní, iraquí, somalí, omaní, saudí, pakistaní, etc., and it’s also applied to the inhabitants of some Spanish cities, such as marbellí (from Marbella). Doesn’t seem to happen much in reference to Latin America. There are words like guaraní, but that comes from the native lanuage of those people (same in English).