What is the demonym for a person from Gouda?

Solution 1:

I would go with Goudan.*

There does not appear to be an established English demonym to describe the people of Gouda, let alone the adjective to describe anything coming from that province.

However, I think many linguists consider demonyms to be productive i.e. open to new formations.

Demonyms are often based on the adjective form of the noun, and typical examples derive from Proper Noun to Adjective conversion .

Continents:

America > American
Asia > Asian
Africa > African
Australia > Australian

Countries:

Moldavia > Moldavian
Australia > Australian
Austria > Austrian
Bolivia > Bolivian
Bulgaria > Bulgarian
Jamaica > Jamaican
Kenya > Kenyan
Korea > Korean
Liberia > Liberian
Russia > Russian
Venezuela > Venezuelan
Tonga > Tongan

etc

American States:

California > Californian
Virginia > Virginian
Dakota > Dakotan

etc.

American Cities:

Philadelphia > Philadelphian

I have at least several dozen more examples...but as you can see, these types of nouns end with either the phoneme /Ə/ or the diphthong /IƏ/**

No matter how you pronounce Gouda, the final syllable is /Ə/, in other words, a schwa

If we accept that this is a productive process, than the suffix '-an' seems to be the way to go.

On the other hand, it has been pointed out by @Mitch and @Andrew Leach that there are other formations based on a similar pronunciation and intonation.

China > Chinese

Ghana > Ghanaian***

Malta > Maltese

These seem to be outliers of morphological trends, not uncommon in English.

*In the last 100 years or so, the production of English demonyms with non-Latin roots tends to lean towards '-an'...

**Most city, state, and nation names in English that end in a vowel usually derive from a non-English source.

***See below comments for clarification

Solution 2:

I'm pretty sure there isn't one. We have our own demonyms for a few very well-known foreign cities (Roman, Parisian) but not for the majority of places. I don't even know of many for places in the UK.