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?
They are different. The others are the official name for ethnic groups. Pakistani is for people from Pakistan, Paki was invented to put them down as a shortening of their proper name. You wouldn’t call a Uzbek person an Uzi or a Turkmen a Turki. That’d be derogatory.