How to Say Country Names and Nationalities in Tagalog

 

If you’re learning Tagalog by talking to native Tagalog speakers, one of the things that you will probably do often is introduce yourself and the country where you are from. If you don’t know how to do that yet, here’s a guide on how to say different country names in Tagalog including their respective demonyms.

   

Few country names have Tagalog counterparts. In most cases, Tagalog speakers call the countries either by their English names, or, in some cases, by their Spanish names (although this doesn’t necessarily work all of the time). If you are not sure which one to use, it’s always safe to go by the English name.

 

 

The same goes for demonyms, where Tagalog counterparts are relatively few. Most nationalities are simply addressed with their English or Spanish names, except for a few examples like the ones you will see below.

 

In the case of countries with no specific demonyms in Tagalog, a generic way to refer to a particular demonym or nationality is by adding the prefix –“taga” before the name of the country a specific person is from. The “-taga” prefix means “someone who resides in” or “someone from,” so when you introduce yourself as “taga-South Africa,” it means you are someone who resides or are from South Africa.

You can find some more examples of how this is used below.