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It's been researched that every country has their adjectival form (exception is a demonym, which denotes nouns), such as the adjectival form of Mexico is Mexican, the adjectival form of Russia is Russian, and their currencies are "Mexican peso" and "Russian ruble", respectively.

In currencies, mostly I have found adjectival forms of the countries e.g. Mexican peso and Russian ruble. But what happened to the adjectival forms of Belize, Singapore, Lesotho and Turkmenistan, as their currencies are:

It's been noted that the word "Basotho" is both demonym as well as the adjectival form of Lesotho. And "Basotho" as a demonym is plural per se; its singular form is "Mosotho".

Out of 190+ countries, these countries are the exceptions which have no any adjectival forms in their currencies.

The Google Search Engine supports what I thought of those adjectival forms. See that when you type "Singaporean dollar" on Google, then it pops up that exact option, but when you search it, it doesn't show any exact result, rather it says Singapore Dollar. I wish I could know its reason.

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    For that matter, we say "U.S. dollar", not "American dollar".
    – ruakh
    Nov 18, 2018 at 17:46
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    I suspect it is a question of quick pronounciation. Singapore is shorter and easier to pronounce than Singaporean while, Mexican and Russian, for instance, are not much different from Mexico and Russia. Currency traders use these terms in buying and selling currencies for hundreds/thousands transactions carried out every day, especially in the past (before pervasive technology was introduced in finance) so the shorter the term, the quicker and the better. Btw the term that currency traders use for the Singapore Dollar is “Sing Dollar”.
    – user 66974
    Nov 21, 2018 at 13:24
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    @malvolio There is no adjective from the USA per se. America is used as an unambiguous synonym and its adjective is American. Wikipedia discussed the terminology. It does not give the adjective but it gives the demonym and when a demonym is adjectival in form we can assume it is the adjective. The situation is very different from the UK where the adjective British from Britain is used but is both ambiguous and controversial.
    – David Robinson
    Nov 21, 2018 at 18:08
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    This is an interesting question, but what it is about is not specific to currencies. There seems to be a general reluctance to use adjectives such as Singaporean: compare, for example, 'Singapore Airlines' with 'Austrian Airlines'. The same reluctance exists with respect to the adjectives formed out of the names of the states within the U.S.: one does not hear the adjective Californian very often, for example.
    – jsw29
    Nov 21, 2018 at 22:12
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    Your Question would be wholly reasonable, were it not that as you said, Lesotho loti (rather than Mosotho loti (Mosotho is singular, while Basotho is plural). Please first translate all of that into English…
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Nov 24, 2018 at 18:50

1 Answer 1

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There is no strict rule based on grammar that you can give as there is no fixed rule for how to form an adjective from a country. Who would guess that French is the adjective from France? So if the country and its currency are referred to often people will know the adjective.

If the adjective is easy to guess it will help. For example many countries end in an a and you just add an n such as Latvia > Latvian. This is why we do not use Mosotho. (Note that Argentinean appears to be an exception but it probably comes from The Argentine not from Argentina.)

If the adjective is long (Singaporean) or sounds strange in English (Belizean) it will also be a deterrent.

So overall there are several factors which affect how likely we are to use the adjective.

There is one well known country that does not have an adjective of its own. This is the UK. There is a historical reason for this. Before 1801, Britain and the UK were virtually the same but in 1801 Ireland was added to the UK. As Ireland was only gradually accepted into the union no one ever invented the adjective for the UK. For example they had their own currency until 1826. This means that British was the logically correct adjective for the currency until then.

The reason for going on about the UK is because it shows that there may be historical reasons for using a particular word in a particular country. For example the Russian rouble is not the currency of Russia per se but the currency of the Russian Federation and before that the USSR and the Russian Empire. In short there may be historical reasons specific to a given currency.

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    This answer is probably on the right track, but one may still wonder what precisely it is that makes Belizean 'sound strange' in English? Why does it sound more strange than, say, Peruvian? Some explicit account of its strangeness is needed to make it clear that its sounding strange is not due merely to its being rarely heard (which would make the explanation circular).
    – jsw29
    Nov 23, 2018 at 16:14
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    I totally agree, @jsw29, that we need a reference to some research if there is any, and that the argument appears circular. All I can say is that I can't think of any words that sound like Belizean, that is, I can't think of any rhymes, whereas I can think of a rhyme for Peruvian, namely antediluvian. One could do some research to see if the existence of rhymes influences how likely the adjective is to be used. It would be complicated as there are several other factors, as already discussed, that would have to be taken into account.
    – David Robinson
    Nov 23, 2018 at 17:39
  • @David Robinson Nitpick re "no one ever invented the adjective for the UK": the humorous coinage UKoGBaNIan does exist, but obviously it is not used seriously or in wide-spread fashion. See also Wiktionary
    – njuffa
    Nov 24, 2018 at 3:09

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