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• Ian
  Ian

  noun

  a male given name, Scottish form of John.
• -ian
  -ian

  a suffix with the same meaning and properties as -an, though -ian is now the more productive of the two suffixes in recent coinages, especially when the base noun ends in a consonant: Orwellian; Washingtonian .

Ian

¹ American  

[ee-uhn, ee-ahn, ahy-uhn] / ˈi ən, ˈi ɑn, ˈaɪ ən /

noun

1. a male given name, Scottish form of John.

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-ian ² American  

1. a suffix with the same meaning and properties as -an, though -ian is now the more productive of the two suffixes in recent coinages, especially when the base noun ends in a consonant: Orwellian; Washingtonian .

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-ian British  

suffix

1. a variant of -an

   Etonian

   Johnsonian

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Etymology

Origin of -ian

Extracted from Latin loanwords in which -ānus (adjective suffix) is joined to stems ending in i; see -an

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Ian -ian

Michael Ian Black is an actor, writer and comedian who currently appears as a Team Captain on CNN’s Have I Got News For You.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026

The only surviving guest, Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, has never fully recovered from his ordeal, they said.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

Lead researcher Dr. Ian Towle, a Research Fellow at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, said recent findings are making the existing classification system less useful and less accurate.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 20, 2026

Ian Morgan, chief executive of the WJEC, said he had "listened intently to comments from schools and college leaders and put some solutions in place".

From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026

We also focused on the children who, like Joe Sullivan, Ian Manuel, and Antonio Nuñez, had been convicted of non-homicide offenses.

From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson

The adjectivally ennobled: the ones whose names sprout "-esque" and "-ian".

From The Guardian ● Jan. 15, 2013

Distinction is to be made, therefore, only between Classes II and I. Class II contains the verbs with infinitive in -ian not preceded by r.

From Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary by C. Alphonso (Charles Alphonso) Smith

Note.—These verbs have no trace of original umlaut, since their -ian was once -ōjan.

From Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary by C. Alphonso (Charles Alphonso) Smith