Reasons for the lack of differentiation in words related to professions

Question

Take the following semantic groups in English:

• Politics; political; politician.
• Mathematics; mathematical; mathematician.
• Music; musical; musician.

The pattern is clear: given the noun for a discipline, you can add the suffix -al to form the adjective meaning "related to such discipline", or you can add the suffix -ian to form the noun meaning "someone whose profession is such discipline". Thus getting distinct words for each concept.

In Spanish, however, it seems to be more common to use the same word for several, if not all of those different meanings:

• Política; política; política.
• Matemáticas; matemáticas; matemáticas.
• Música; musical*; música.

^{* Though the DLE still defines músico, a as «1. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a la música. Instrumento músico. Composición música.»}

The list goes on: médico, técnica...

Question: has it always been like this? Did Spanish ever had a specific suffix for the above professions, equivalent to English -ian, and then it got lost? Why (or why not)?

Answer 1

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The reason for the lack of differentiation in Spanish is that there was often a lack of differentiation in Latin, e.g.

• mathēmaticus meaning both mathematical and mathematician
• medicus meaning both medical and physician

In these words, the English suffixed versions are either semi-learned latinisms (e.g. mathematics +‎ -al), or adaptions of the French (e.g. mathématicien < mathématique + -ien). So, the question might be more meaningfully posed, why did French/English a̲d̲d̲ this differentiation in such words?

Of course, as you note, this lack of differentiation in Spanish/3-way differentiation in English is far from universal. Exceptions run in both directions in all sorts of flavours:

topic / person / adj

• "...ic"
  • En anorexia, anorexic, anorexic
    Es anorexia, anoréxico, anoréxico
  • En electronics, electronic, [...]
    Es electrónico, electrónico, [...]

adjective

• "...al"
  • En diagonal, cerebral, additional
    Es diagonal, cerebral, adicional
• "...ic"
  • algebraic, acrobatic, biographic
    algebraico, acrobático, biográfico
• "...ian"
  • microbian, Gregorian, Euclidean
    microbiano, gregoriano, euclidiano

person

• "...ian"
  • citizen, Hawaiian, Italian
    ciudadano, hawaiano, italiano

mismatches

• provincial, parroquial, mundane
  provinciano, parroquiano, mundial (mundano)

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Sources

^{• https://es.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categoría:ES:Palabras_con_el_sufijo_-ano
 • https://es.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categoría:ES:Palabras_con_el_sufijo_-al
 • https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Spanish_words_suffixed_with_-ico}