Cambodian is the word for people and things from Cambodia, the country in southeast Asia between Thailand and Vietnam, with its capital at Phnom Penh. You can say Cambodian food, Cambodian silk, or the Cambodian government. As a noun, a Cambodian is a person from that country. Some people say Khmer when they mean the main ethnic group or the language; Cambodian is the general English word for the nationality. The country itself used to be called Kampuchea, and English writing about Cambodian life in the 1970s and 1980s often talks about the years under Pol Pot and the war that followed. That is the country’s history riding along with the word, not a second meaning. After elections in 1993 the country began to be rebuilt; when someone says “Cambodian” today they usually just mean from that place, now.