Should it be "Zamorian," or "Zamoran?"

Zamora, with its epithet-laden cities Zamora the Accursed and Shadizar the Wicked, has always been one of my favorite Hyborian Age nations. It's not a large country, but it's always seemed to be filled to the border with scoundrels and treasure and danger. But I've always had one issue: Robert E. Howard uses the term "Zamorian," while many other authors have used the term "Zamoran." Which is more proper?

In terms of stories either written or outlined by creator Robert E. Howard, Zamora appears in "The Tower of the Elephant," "The Hall of the Dead," and "The Blood-Stained God," the last two of which were posthumous collaborations by L. Sprague de Camp. Howard uses the term "Zamorian" to describe the denizens of Zamora in both "Tower of the Elephant" and the two-page synopsis that would become "Hall of the Dead." In turning a Kirby O'Donnell story "The Curse of the Crimson God" into a Conan story set in the Hyborian Age, de Camp followed suit by using the term "Zamorian." But to be honest, it always felt a little more natural to me without the "i." It's not Zamoria.

To make matters even slightly worse, there seems to be much confusion about Zamora. L. Sprague de Camp (mistakenly) re-named the City of Thieves to Arenjun rather than Zamora, a revision that has persevered throughout loads of Conan media despite most people with an opinion on the subject saying that it's wrong.

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You may be the type to say, "Howard used 'Zamorian,' therefore it's 'Zamorian,' next question, please," and that's valid. But so many other authors playing in Howard's sandbox have used the term "Zamoran," so I wanted to delve a little deeper and see if there's a form that it should take.

Demonyms

When we say "Zamorian" or "Zamoran" to describe a ficitonal person from the fictional land of Zamora, what we're doing is employing those terms as demonyms. A demonym (or a "gentilic") is a word that identifies a group of people in relation to a place. Essentially, it's the adjective form of a place's name. They're frequently created simply by adding an -n on the end of the name of the place, but not always.

But even more than that, "Zamorian" and "Zamoran" can also function as ethnonyms. Much like demonyms, these terms denote a group of people in relation to an ethnicity. So you could scurry your way up Yara's tower and steal heaps of Zamorian jewels, but you could also get into a tavern brawl with some Zamorian bruisers. Each nation in the Hyborian Age has an ethnonym attached to it, but I can't find any that waffle back and forth between two options like those from Zamora do.

I thought that the answer to my question might be as simple as looking online into the real-life region of Zamora, Spain. Like the Hyborian Age region of the same name, the capital of Spain's Zamora is also named Zamora. Unfortunately, the demonym for these particular Spaniards is "Zamorano" and "Zamorana," so it's not an exact match.

Even a cursory look into demonyms and ethnonyms reveals that they aren't always as simple as merely adding an -n to the end of the name of a place. In fact, it's very often irregular. Adding -ian, -er, -ish, and many other suffixes, while also changing or dropping the end of words are ridiculously common.

Howard even did this with other ethnicities and demographics within the Hyborian Age, but as far as I've ever read, nobody has ever offered alternative demonyms for them.

Sometimes demonyms and ethnonyms even get extremely irregular. They may change the spelling of the place or be completely unrelated to the root word. This might be based on all kinds of things like phonemes in a word, a historical circumstance, or a sports mascot.

Seriously, you could go on and on about non-standard demonyms for hours. I bet you know a few that are a little strange near where you live. 

If we stick with cultures from the Hyborian Age, most stick with the standard demonym form, but there are quite a few that are irregular!

There are even several cultures that I don't think we have a demonym for. What do we call people from the Border Kingdoms? How about residents of Punt? Are the citizens of Ophir Ophirians (or Ophireans)? If you're from the lost city of Kuthchemes, are you a Kuthchemer?

So... "Zamorian" or "Zamoran?"

I've always found the "word of God" answer of "Howard used 'Zamorian,' so that settles it," to be rather boring, but after looking into how many irregular demonyms and ethnonyms there are, there really isn't any reason for the correct term to not be "Zamorian." The Hyborian Age has always had contradictions of which even Robert E. Howard is guilty. Hey Bob, is the capital of Aquilonia Tarantia or Tamar? Because it varies by story. 

From now on, I'll more confidently use the term "Zamorian" to refer to that ancient race of people who swear by Bel slink through the Maul at night, and I wish future authors would be consistent in using just one of them.

You can tell this map was designed for Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comics rather than the prose narratives because of the spelling of "Aesgaard." Marvel changed the spelling to differentiate it from Thor's homeworld of Asgard.