emirati

[Herb Stahlke]

I came across "Emirati" today for the first time as a term for citizens of
United Arab Emirates.  It gets 4.93m hits on Google, so I'm obviously behind
the wave.  An Arabic root, amir "commander", from which we ultimately get
"admiral," combined with the Latinate -ate suffix as in "professorate" or
"syndicate" plus the suffix -i borrowed from Arabic where it's an adjectival
marker as in "Baghdadi."  Its singular use is attested by the blogsite name
"An Emirati's thoughts" http://aethoughts.blogspot.com/.   Its plural is
"Emiratis" (56,600 hits)
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=106065&d=25&m=1&y=2008.
It's obviously an analogical form, but is this
Arabic+Latinate+Arabic(+English) morphological pattern found in other forms,
or is Emirati(s) unique?

Herb

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