inspired by the comments to this post i've been poking around the internets researching how english comes up with the word for people from a particular place. in case you're curious too, that kind of word is called a demonym.
as i mentioned in the comments below, one of my long unfulfilled useless projects i have on my "to do" list is to make a color coded map of the world to show how english-language demonyms are grouped by geography (except that when i came up with the idea, i didn't know they were called "demonyms"). actually as i googled around this morning, i was kinda hoping that i would find that someone already made the map of my dreams (my favorite way of getting rid of useless projects is letting someone else do it for me). alas, if it exists, i haven't found it yet. but if you feel like stepping up to the plate, this is a good place to start (UPDATE: this is even better and this could be useful for an entirely different map)
one other discovery from my research: i am not the biggest demonym geek around.
