Nazwy mieszkanców - the names of a city/country residents in Polish

Hello!
I would like to ask for some help again!
I know that also in Polish we can express that someone comes from/lives in somewhere with affixes.
I know that:
toruńczyk -who lives in Toruń
europejczyk - in Europe
amerikanin - in America
litwin - in Lithuania
słoweniec - who is Slovene
etc
(hope I spelled them correctly)
but... is there any rule about the using of the different affixes after the different names?
For example, how do we say in Polish:
who lives in Kraków, in £ódź, in Białystok....?
And one more question, what about the -ski ending? Do we use it only for the noble names, or can we use it in usual situations (np. warszawski... ?)? And what about the -ak ending, when do we use it?

I know it was a lot of questions, but I would be thankful for any help :-))

This is a rather difficult question. As far as I know there isn't any rules, we just say what is phonetically convenient. For many names there may be two versions like, for example, for the inhabitant of Warsaw: you may call him 'warszawiak', and it is common as in the saying 'nie masz cwaniaka nad warszawiaka'; you may also hear the form 'warszawianin/ warszawianka' which is perhaps a little more formal.

For the names you asked:
Kraków - krakowianin, krakowiak / krakowianka
£ódź - łodzianin / łodzianka [we would not say 'łodziak']
Białystok - białostoczanin / białostoczanka

Most commonly, you use the -anin ending (gdańszczanin, szczecinianin, gdynianin), sometimes you use -iak more often than -anin (poznaniak vs. poznanianin).

1. Amerykanin, not amerikanin
2. Litwin, Ukrainczyk etc should be written with first letter capitalised

for example:

Poznań- Poznańska Pyra

;)

Thank you very much for the answers!
:-)) Now it's getting clearer. And thank you for the correction, too.

ski-words are common adjectives (declined as other adjectives in all genders and cases).

Nominative case:
-ski (masc.)
-ska (fem.)
-skie (neutr. and plural)

Uniwersytet Warszawski (masc)
Ulica Warszawska (fem.)
Augustowskie noce (plural) [an old famous song]

I guess you know adjective endings in the other cases.
E.g. Mieszkam na ulicy Warszawskiej (locative case of feminine gender)

wrong
It's Torunianin (single) and Torunianie (plural)

As Ziemowit says, forms with '-ak' ending are less formal, but don't apply to all cities. So you don't say 'torunczyk' or 'gdanszczak'; you say 'gdanszczanin/torunianin etc and general rule is creating the names by adding '(n)in'.

Krakowiak, Warszawiak, even Wroclawiak are ok tho.
The naming rule can be split in 3 basic sections:
-naming citizens of Polish cities
-naming foreigners (such as Amerykanin, Brytyjczyk, Norweg, Szwed etc)
-naming citizens of foreign cities( berlinczyk, londynczyk, BUT prazanka= female citizen of Prague (m. - prazanin), and paryzanin = citizen of Paris (f. - paryzanka)

But as you can see - there seem to be no strict rule for foreign cities' citizens :)

I recommend this:
so.pwn.pl

Krakowiak: a man from one of the villages in the vicinity of Kraków
encyklopedia.pwn.pl/haslo.php?id=3926971

a person who lives in the city of Krakow - krakowianin
a person who lives in the vicinity of Krakow - krakowiak

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakowiak

but that also includes folk in the town of Krakow..

who live in Koło ?

They who live in Koło, I would call them:
'zakręceni Kolanie' or 'skołowani Kolanie'.

When they're having a partiularly good time, they may be called 'rozkręceni Kolanie'. But locals from neighbouring towns and villiges would perhaps call them 'Kolaki' ('Kolak' in singular).

Actually, I would use the term Krakowiak only in regards to a village man in the traditional costume.



Well, yes, but that must be a really old meaning, probably from the XV or XIV century (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziemia).

Actuall, USJP, a dictionary based on language corpus, says that the primary meaning of "Krakowiak" still remains "an inhabitant of the area surrounding Kraków".


Mieszkaniec Koła :-)

kolanin, kolanka:
sjp.pl/co/kolanin
sjp.pl/co/kolanka