Why are only people from the USA called Americans?

I was about to "amend my profile" when I realized that it's not fair to write down American, because from Alaska to Chile, every one is an American. So why can't people from the U.S. be called United Stadians or Unatians. Don't laugh, this is serious! so help me chose, United Stadian or Unatian? or come up with a good one.

USian is the easiest IMO

They are called Americans because the full name of the country is U.S. A. United States of America. The other North American countries use their own country names.

People from the United States wanted to be called Americans. [img]http://www.keithball.net/img/smileys/emot-patriot.gif[/img] Everyone else didnt want to be lumped into the same group. It's political.

It's like you can't call the Irish, British even though they come from the British Isles.

EDIT: The British dont like being called European half the time.. its a denial of geography for politcal reasons thing.

I suspect the Chileans might disagree with you on that one, Aschaffenburgboy.


'Zactly. Although I understand there are moves afoot to change the geographical name of the island group.

The German "U.S.-Amerikaner" sounds poncy but is in fact the best solution going. Shame it doesn't work in English: "U.S. American"

Thx Jeeves, I was going to point out that in our translations convention is to use "us-amerikanisch" for anything from the good old US of A. Americans are called Americans because Amerigo Vespucci (from Florence) really discovered America. Colombia snatched Cristobal's moniker so the rest of the double-continented inhabitants had to make do with their own countries' appellations.
More interesting is how everyone knows who is meant when we refer to the U.S. totally disregarding the United States of Mexico, United States of Egypt and whatever else you might have.

I thought his name was Americo Vespucio... I guess that's in spanish then, and yours is italian. So then America should be Ameriga...shouldn't it?

Kindof related in a more obtuse way...I went to high school with a girl who said something absolutely brilliant which has stayed with me till now. She was a black girl and we were talking about political correctness and such and I asked her what she preferred to be referred to as... black, African American, etc. She just looked at me and said, "American."

Well we can thank the Germans for having named the new world and making America synonymous with the USA.

Waldseemüller map

No America is correct. Because all other continents end with an 'a' (in Latin), they wanted them to be consistent.

Europa
Asia
Africa
Americo -> America

EDIT: Here it is.

some historians believe America was actually named after Richard Amerike. It was tradition to name places after people's surnames, not their first names, which makes the Amerigo theory unlikely. Richard Amerike was a wealthy merchant who funded John Cabot' expedition and it was commonplace for discovered lands to be name after benefactors.

ABB, you got me so nervous I actually looked it up! Amerigo is correct, and I think the disquiet related more to the g converting to a c than the o/a question.
EDIT:

Why do I think of monkey-boy whenever I read your user name? To answer both questions, because that is the way it is.

Admit it, United States of Vespuccia, or Native Vespuccians are both sort of, well, errh ...

I mean the name of the guy. America was named after Americo Vespucio, or in italian Amerigo Vespucci. He was an italian navigator, who used to be an agent of one of the wealthiest families in Florence, the Medici Family.

Yeah, like it says in my link.

EUROVOL =EXTREME UNDERSMELL OF VAGINAL ORDER LIQUIDS, I think Ilike yours better dude!

it may not be a widely held theory (amongst many Americans) but it doesn't mean it is wrong. There is actually more evidence to support this theory than the Vespucci theory.

Read this: The Columbus Myth Exposed

i changed it when i caught it.

Oh Christ, another conspiracy theory...

I can't say for sure when or why the term was originated, in this wikpedia article there are some suggestions for that. However the use of the term American to refer to US citizens is mostly ambiguous in the English language and is still the common appelative today because of historical reasons. In Spanish the usual term would be Estadounidense, which denotes a person from the United States (Estados Unidos). There are also some other appelatives for US citizens used in Latin America which in general originated as offensive names during the many years of political dispute between the countries south of the Rio Grande and the US. Gringo which derives from Green go home is probably the most common. Nowadays, its significance is not offensive. You would rarely hear people from Latin America calling US citizens "Americans" the term "North American" is more common although it is also disputed by Mexicans who also belong to what geographically would be North America.

First off, I have cheech and chong's Mexican American chant in my head...Mexican American... Second, I had a gym teacher named Amerika, she was hot and bendy. Third, call yourself whatever you like. I prefer American to anything else out of habit. My mexican friends (real ones not cheech and chong) prefer to be called Mexicans and ditto the Canadians. In general stating your country and if you can claim one, a home state, seems easier than saying North American.

I thought everybody knew that it was Amerigo Vaspucci that discovered America, and Columbus did the Carribean Islands- both were looking for a route to India to trade spices. Spain, Portugal and Italy all went south looking for a route
Just as the English and French went north, which is why Cabot and Cartier set up settlements there. In 1510 L'habitation or currently know as Montreal was fortified.
But the Islandic were there about 500 years earlier than the rest of the europeans. They actually lived on Nfld for about 24 years (around 1000BC), the reason on the 24 years is still under research, did they die out or did they move on?

the thing is Carm, there is no conclusive proof one way or the other as to how America got its name. The Vespucci theory is simply the one that is told in all North American history books, so everyone believes it to be the "truth".

Heck, its our continent, our history books.

Hmmmm... I thought that the reason why we were always called "Americans" was because of the English, as an "Old World," "New World" kinda thing: we couldn't be English, because we were in the New World, i.e. "America," hence we're Americans.

Don't know why people from the US are not differentiated - I would prefer not to be associated to those North ands South of the borders

(... hides away, waiting to get "bitch-slapped" via PM...)

Well...it's done. AMERICAN it is. But I really do not like to consider myself an `Ami´ since I was not call American, but Latino or Hispanic whenever I had to fill out a job or College application. When would I stop being a `minority´, and start being just American? OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT lol.

via PM? I can do it right here.

Ahhh... Well, then you're speaking about a something which is very idiosyncratic to people living in the US. When in the States, it's implied that I am Polish-American, Irish-American or English-American. If I were to go to Poland, Ireland or Englang, I'd be laughed at if I said I was Polish, Irish or English.

In other words: drop the adjective-modifier in the beginning: you're American.

(... hides away, waiting to get "bitch-slapped"...)

Canadians do the same sort of thing- Icelandic Canadian, Ukrainian Canadian, Scotish Canadian, I think its great, one should be proud of their forefathers and what they accomplished. When I travel to those places I say I am of Icelandic heritage, not Icelandic.

Descent or heritage? Do you keep up the Icelandic traditions of eating rotten whale blubber or whatever that specialty is? Considering what a melting pot of nationalities I am in my American-ness I wouldn't have time to uphold all the traditions etc. (But it would be a good excuse to get drunk, celebrating all the various holidays)

I say heritage, some say descendent of...
In my family we do hold alot of our traditions, we eat VienerTarter a typical icelandic cake at all our family get togethers, we did more when my grandfather was alive. He was born in Iceland. We had a smoke house for the fish and ate all kinds of homemade pickled fish. Now my grandmother was part First Nations, and we always ate bannak (used to make it on a stick) and we did eat dried deer meat (hunted and dried ourselves).
I understand that there are people that don't do anything traditional, but say I am 'Irish American/Canadian' let them, does it really effect your daily life if they do?

I uphold almost none of my heritage, except for maybe the Irish "heritage" of drinking quite a bit. Well, ok, I do like a good kolbasi.

Somewhere along the line (I'm guessing the early '90's), I internalized the politically correct notion that calling myself "American" as a citizen of the US was completely insensitive to the other countries in North and South America. When I first moved to Germany in 2001, it was at first startling, then uncomfortable, to say I was "American." But that's what everyone else there said, so I got used to it.

Back in the Homeland now, PC is out, and the whole issue around what to call a US citizen has been dropped.

America! F*ck yeah!

For the record, Canadians prefer to refer to their culture as a "tossed salad" and not a "melting pot".

There is a distinct difference.

Sounds like one was forced ("tossed salad") and the other just sorta happened ("melting pot").

tossed salad... *giggle*

I supposed the idea with a tossed salad is that you still have the individual pieces of lettuce, vegetable, etc that combine to make up the salad. The melting pot is all blended to the point you don't know what's what anymore.

The idea is that in a salad all the individual parts are still recognizable and can co-exist together without losing their identities. A melting pot implies everything becomes one uniform mass.

EDIT: what Fallen Angel said

plus I guess you can take out the bits you dont like in the salad in the pot you have no choice

In other words, "it becomes it's own thing," in other words: "It's its own culture!!" HA to all the Brits who say the US doesn't have it's own culture!!!


Hmmmm... I don't think I like what you're implying...

To be fair, you'd have to assume a a brit is a fucking moron to think the U.S. doesn't have its own culture...

we don't have any fucking morons on TT, do we?

That's true.

I just got a bit aggro because a Brit acquaintance of mine said such a thing on Sunday night. I was NOT too happy...

That's beyond rediculous...I'd have just laughed my ass off at'em.

I agree that the US has it's own unique culture as does Canada.

People who claim the contrary have generally spent very little time there.

I tried, but then I tried to be diplomatic and say: "Well, the US has sort of borrowed from other cultures and mixed and matched various bits and bobs, blah, blah, blah..."

Which then invoked a response of: "Oh, you mean to say that you have nothing culturally original in the US."

Easy answer to this is "Native Americans" or does their culture not count?

then they were trying to bait you, I think the US has a very unique culture, every part of the US is different, the people live differently and eat differently.
When I get German's making comments- like 'oh, you are Canadian, its the same as American' I reply- 'So, what part of Austria are you from?' Heck, its similar, they speak the same language, eat the same foods, isn't it the same?

That sort of stuff happens all the time, people in Europe always refer to me as a 'South American' even when they know I'm from Mexico (North America) it is just lack of Geographical knowledge...