Derivatives of Place Names

Abstract

This study is an attempt to find out whether it is predictable for a given place name to combine with a given suffix in forming nominal and/or adjectival derivatives. It has examined over 300 place names, including all the country names, U.S. state names and a limited number of city and region names. The result points to several locally applicable tendencies rather than generally applicable rules. For example, place names of Teutonic language backgrounds are most likely to take -er, as in Berlin>Berliner, and place names of Indo-Iranian language back- grounds tend to take -i, as in Kuwait>Kuwaiti. It is suggested that a comprehensive study of the subject requires extensive field work as well as intensive investigation of the data, which is beyond the scope of this paper.