why the variance in spelling trends for words ending in &quo

[cfsoda]

I have a question which I hope you can answer; I am an English-language instructor and some of my students have posed the following, which I cannot answer:

(1) Why would someone from Seoul be called a "Seoulite" and someone from London be called a "Londoner"? (ditto for "Filipino" instead of "Philippinian", "Spaniard" instead of "Spainer" or "Spainian" etc). How and from what "rules" are these pronouns standardized?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!!

[jasminade]

mmm:

some nationalities have a certain shape but they are exceptional:

-ish (mostly European): Irish, British, English, Scottish, Finnish, Polish, Spanish, Turkish...

-ese (mostly Asian): Japanese, Burmese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Portugese

-i (mostly Middle Eastern and Asian): Bahrani, Iraqi, Israeli, Thai, Kuwaiti, Pakistani, Saudi

- an/ian: American, Italian, Indonesian, Australian, Canadian, Russian

-ch: French, Czech, Dutch, Korean

some others: Icelandic, Greek, Filipino, Swiss, Malagasy

hope it's of help!

[danobodhisattvah]

I'm pretty sure there ARE no rules, and it is just case by case.

It comes from local tradition I would suspect.