The people from Uzbekistan are called Uzbeks, the people from Turkmenistan are called Turkmen, the people from Afghanistan are called Afghans.
It’s only come to my attention recently that calling someone from Pakistan a ‘Paki’ is an insult. Should it just be ‘Paks’ and somehow adding an I is incorrect?
Can anyone explain this to me?
Unlike the others, where the ethnic group preceded the country, to quote wikipedia, the name Pakistan “is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands, Indian and Asian, Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.”
There is a 50+ year history of people using it as an umbrella term to (offensively) refer to all the ethnic groups above, regardless of their actual ethnic roots, or even whether they were actually from Pakistan. It’s othering, similar to the word “oriental”, with an extra splash of explicit hatred (rather than just pure ignorance)
The correct demonym is Pakistani. Throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s the terms ‘Paki’ and ‘Stani’ were exclusively used by racists and racist organisations such as the National Front and British Movement.