Portuguese demonyms and toponyms

some issues

Abstract

Demonyms are words that express the national or regional origin. There are several ways to derive these names in Portuguese and there is no strict rule. As a matter of fact, demonyms suffer the effect of tradition that sometimes makes them very different from the toponyms they refer to (e.g. the use of Latin or Latinized forms for a demonym but not for the toponym results in a completely unclear pair, such as Castelo-Branco/albicastrense). Furthermore, Portuguese can appeal to a large number of suffixes for the derivation of demonyms, and the choice is not predictable: Polónia-polaco; México-mexicano; França-francês; Espanha-espanhol. Moreover, the multiplicity of choices causes differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese: e.g. polaco and polonês or canadiano and canadense. Up to the present, the study of demonyms has not attracted the attention of Portuguese linguists. There is an old geographical vocabulary, by Magnus Bergstrom and Neves Reis, with over 30 reprints since 1955, which lists about 200 Portuguese demonyms and sets Portuguese forms for foreign demonyms (such as Oxónia and Ausburgo). Nowadays, a recent online vocabulary, Dicionário de Gentílicos e Topónimos, raises again the issue of the standardization of demonyms and changes some of them. Yet, it should be noted that not all the words that this new dictionary lists are present in contemporary Portuguese usage. The present paper consists of a description and critical analysis of this lexicon (by sampling), seeking to find dominant patterns and variation factors, namely historical.