HALF-TIME SHOW

Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist, but a person who drives a race car is not called a racist?

What’s so funny about this? It’s funny because it’s a logical question while English is an illogical language. It’s very common in the English language to call a person who does something or believes in something by the name of that something and adding “-ist” to the end of that word. For example, someone who believes in Communism is a communist; a believer in the ideas of Mao is called a Maoist”; a saxophone player is a saxonphonist, my daughter who studies and now teaches sociology is a sociologist, and so on. At the same time there are many, many exceptions to this rule. For example someone who believes in Catholicism is a Catholic, not a Catholist. Someone who believes in the ideas of Einstein is not an Einsteinist, but just a follower of Einstein. Someone who teaches geography is a geographer, not a geographist. There is no broad general rule for this. However, usually