885: Combining Forms May 11, 2017

There are a number of combining forms for the names of countries that function like prefixes, such as the 'Anglo-' in 'Anglo-Dutch', but English has a limited number of these. They almost always have '-o-' at the end that can replace other suffixes with the exception perhaps of 'Amer-' for American and a few others. For instance, the '-ian' in 'Indian' or '-ean' in 'European', which are quite common among the adjectival form for the names of places, are replaced with '-o-' in 'Indo-Australian plate'. At other times, such as with 'Hiberno-' for 'Irish', these forms are also historical, with this one originating from the Latin 'Hibernia'. Though there are some conventional limitations, like not having combining forms for countries beginning with 'The' nor countries with multiple-word names, there is really no set way that this is done. Luckily for people who don't want to have to memorize which combining form is which, these are becoming less and less popular, so what might have once been a Russo-American conflict would now be a Russian-American conflict, for most.