What's so special about the Philippines?

[ekolis]

People who live in America are called Americans, and their culture is American. People who live in China are called Chinese, and their culture is called Chinese. People who live in Ghana are called Ghanaians, and their culture is called Ghanaian. So... how come people who live in the Philippines are called Filipinos, while their culture is called Philippine?

[gmalivuk]

There's already a difference there between American and Chinese, in that the first can be a singular noun, while the second is really only an adjective (and is seen as rather offensive when used as a noun). The -ish ones are flat-out ungrammatical as singular nouns.

People who live in Turkey are Turks, and yet their culture and language are Turkish. People from Spain are Spaniards, but their culture and language are Spanish. People from Sweden are Swedes, but their culture and language are Swedish. In other words, all of the -ish ones are like this.

[eSOANEM]

while their culture is called Philippine?

It is? I'd have called it Filipino culture and don't think I've heard "Philippine culture" before.

As for a reason, proper nouns and their derivatives are highly irregular so there will always be a large number of odd examples (e.g. Canada -> Canadian instead of Canadan/Canadese or, going backwards, Canadian -> Canada not Canadia).

[Eugo]

People who live in America are called Americans, and their culture is American. People who live in China are called Chinese, and their culture is called Chinese. People who live in Ghana are called Ghanaians, and their culture is called Ghanaian. So... how come people who live in the Philippines are called Filipinos, while their culture is called Philippine?

Just a stab at the particular reason why this case is irregular (and many are, anyway).

It's a worldwide tradition to never translate/transliterate names, except for popes and crowned heads. A king named Stephen may be Stephanos, Stefan, Stevan, István etc; an Elisabeth - Elizabeta, Jelisaveta, Erzsébet, Elzbieta etc; Ioannus Paulus II was Juan Pablo Segundo, Jovan Pavle II, Második János Pál, Ivan Pavao II, John Paul the 2^nd, Jean Paul 2^eme (sp?) etc etc.

Now the name of king Filip/Felipe/Phillip was given to a group of islands... and the translation applied as well, but not all the way. So in non-Spanish languages, name of the country may be translated/transliterated to accommodate the rules. The names of the people, culture, anything else related to the country (language not, in this case, it's Tagalog) - no firm rule there, and these may have been set in many ways, case to case.