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America is a continent, not a country

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 12:52 UTC (Wed) by Delicieuxz (guest, #172896)
In reply to: America is a continent, not a country by jkingweb
Parent article: Bringing encryption restrictions in through the back door

There are widely-recognized demonyms to refer to a US citizen other than the misnomer and misappropriation of American. Just maybe not in English.

In Spanish (which is the dominant language of America), there's "estadounidenses", which translates to United-Statesian. The shorter form for which would be USian.

In French, there's états-unien, which again translates to United-Statesian.

In Italian, there's statunitense, which is again United-Statesian.

In German, there's US-Amerikaner, which translates to US-American - as opposed to Canadian-American, Peruvian-American, Bolivian-American, etc.

In Canada, we rarely use the term America to refer to the US, or American to refer to a US citizen. We usually call the US the US, and a person from the US simply a US citizen, from the US, or from the States. Personally, I use the term USian all the time now.

I've seen it said on occasion "but Mexico's full name is the United States of Mexico, so wouldn't there be confusion there?" And that's not correct, as the full name of Mexico is actually The United Mexican States.

There's a document I saw on the Library of Congress' website which says that the trend of referring to US citizens as Americans wasn't popularized until the 20th century, and happened as a result of the US becoming an empire. So, it's an imperialist slang.

The continent America, with north and south sub-continents (like Eurasia has Europe and Asia sub-continents) was named America centuries before the US existed, and the US from its beginning was named merely "of" the continent America. In fact, in 1783, right before the US became a country, the states were being referred to as the united states of north America. Then the name was shortened to the US of A, but the America in the name always referred to the continent.

So, I don't feel comfortable calling the US by a name that misappropriates what belongs to 35 different countries, or its people's nationality by a term that applies to all the people of America. It's a misnomer and misappropriation, and is basically identity theft for the sake of aggrandizing and reinforcing the imperialist mindset in an impererialist state.

And I cringe a bit when people claim the term for the collective landmass of north and south America is "the Americas", as "the Americas" is plural, referring to multiple landmasses at once. The fact that "Americas" is plural testifies that, as a singular landmass, its name is America.


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America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 13:12 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

There are widely-recognized demonyms to refer to a US citizen other than the misnomer and misappropriation of American. Just maybe not in English.

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright was in favour of the term “Usonian”, which however does not seem to have caught on.

The only language which appears to have picked it up is Esperanto, where the United States is called usono, and its inhabitants are usonanoj.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 14:58 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

I use USAsian. USian seems incomplete to me (United States of ... what? - ian?). USAsian also flows better when spoken.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 15:25 UTC (Wed) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

I suspect that if you use "USAsian" (either written or spoken) without sufficient context, many people will think you're talking about people of Asian ancestry in the US, so it will not be very effective at communicating your intent.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 19:42 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> There are widely-recognized demonyms to refer to a US citizen other than the misnomer and misappropriation of American.

There are two countries with the words "United States" in the official name: the USA, and... Mexico. There's only one country with the word "America" in the official name.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 19:54 UTC (Wed) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, at the risk of being unnecessarily nitpicky: technically, the United States of Mexico's official name is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", as given by the current constitution, and therefore the words "United States" aren't in its name. While the country, like the USA, has no official language, the government does conduct business almost exclusively in Spanish.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 20:33 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

To add to the irony, "American" is probably the easiest and most correct demonym outside the USA. Something like "usian" will require other people to know English enough to understand what the "US" stands for.

"American" also doesn't clash with any other country's name (official or not). It would have been a different story if a significant number of people identified themselves as "North American" or "South American", but I don't think it's a thing?

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 20, 2024 12:32 UTC (Tue) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link]

> In Canada, we rarely use the term America to refer to the US, or American to refer to a US citizen. We usually call the US the US, and a person from the US simply a US citizen, from the US, or from the States.

You and I must live in different Canadas, then. While I agree "America" is practically never used outside an ironic context, I also rarely if ever hear fellow Canadians use a name for our southern neighbours other than "American" (or « américain » in French).


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