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For example, if I were discussing an American citizen of Chinese ethnicity and a Chinese tourist in America, would there be a word to categorize my use of the word 'Chinese' in this context?

As the demonyms for both these cases would be American/Chinese-American and Chinese, would it be incorrect to also call ethnic descriptions 'demonyms'?

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    How are you distinguishing 'nation' and 'ethnicity'?
    – curiousdannii
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 7:04
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    I guess it is an American thing. Ethnicity-Nation: Chinese-American, African-American.
    – mplungjan
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 7:06
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    By 'ethnicity' I mean describing a person based purely on heritage/appearance.
    – Felicity
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 7:45
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    Regardless of wistful sentiments of certain peoples to the intrusion and pervasive adoption of American English into England-English (especially that their pop and rock stars somehow almost always find it expedient to sing their songs in north American English), these are the descriptive terms acceptable and understood worldwide (regardless that the naming convention may have been of US English origins): - Chinese-American, - African-American, - Japanese-American, - Polish-American, - etc-American.
    – Blessed Geek
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 8:27
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    I guess my question is less about the labels themselves but about what to call the labels. Does the word 'demonym' apply if it's ethnicity that I'm referring to?
    – Felicity
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 9:32

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There is such a word: ethnonym.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ethnonym

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    Please note that the OED is a subscriber-only website; hence merely linking to that site is not helpful for those who do not have paid subscriptions. May I suggest that you either quote the relevant section from the OED (with a link to show it's source) and/or use the [ODO](www.oxforddictionaries.com) which has the necessary entry here?
    – TrevorD
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 13:47

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