I was mulling over Wednesday's post about whether we should call ourselves Americans—which is allegedly offensive to other residents of the Americas—and came up with this:
If not American, what do we put in the blank line at the bottom? "A US resident"? That's pretty awkward, no?
We are not the only country with this problem. What do the people of New Zealand call themselves? According to Wikipedia, the official demonym is New Zealanders. Does that mean they'd say "I am New Zealandish"?
Maybe, but even that avenue is cut off to us. "I am US-ish?" I don't think so. "I am a citizen of the US"? That sounds like you're a Roman centurion or something. "I'm from the US"? That might be doable.
But overall, I dunno. Assuming you buy this linguistic criticism in the first place, are there really any good solutions here?
In Spanish, the term is "estadounidenses" (which, by the way, Google Translate converts to "Americans"). It is essentially equivalent to "Unitedstatesians."
Americano/a also translates as American in Google Translate, and is the first choice given when translating from English to Spanish, highly suggesting that estadounidenses may exist as a word but isn’t in common usage among Spanish speakers.
This entire post by Kevin is yet another useless clickbait. Most people around the entire world are ok with calling people from the US “American,” and very few people from other countries in the Americas insist first on calling themselves “American” vs [Canadian, Mexican, Brazilian, Costa Rican, etc.]. So like the word Latinx foisted on native speakers of Spanish that is unpronounceable following the rules of their own language, this issue is a solution in search of a problem.
Thanks Kevin.
My high school Spanish class taught us that most people south of the US border call us norteamericanos. Since a lot of them technically share the continent with them, I thought that was pretty generous of them. (I can't speak for the Canadians on this.)
Like other languages, Spanish has a variety of dialects. As kaleberg says, in most Spanish-speaking countries, people from the United States are referred to as “Norteamericanos.” There are some countries where the term is “Estadounidenses.” It's not so much that “Estadounidenses” isn't in common usage, as that it is in common usage, but only in a few countries. In Spain, the word “Americanos” can be used to refer to people from the United States, but elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, that word refers exclusively to people from the Americas.
That should be:
German-American
Irish-American
etc....
Using "Americans" is a bit obnoxious, but then again, we're using the name of an Italian mapmaker.
I have seen a suggestion that "America" is a latinisation derived from "Markland", the next settlement south of Vinland.
Vespucci wasn't a mapmaker, he was a bona fide explorer. He is supposed to have been the first to measure the longitude of the new world via an astronomical observation and conclude that it was, in fact, an unexpected continent.
I've wondered if Amerigo could have been conflated with Armorica by whoever coined the term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armorica
my bad
This has always been a ridiculous objection. We live in the United States of America. The residents of the United States of Mexico are Mexicans. Those from the Republic of Poland are Polish. Pretty much every country's demonym comes from the word that follows "of." I suppose we could change the name of the continent...
1) It's United Mexican States (Estados Unidos Mexicanos) rather than United States of Mexico.
2) The problem with your examples is that there is nothing called "Poland" outside of the Republic of Poland, nothing called "Mexico" outside of the United Mexican States, etc., whereas there's a whole lot of America outside of the United States of America.
AFAIK, there are no countries outside of the USA that include America in their official name.
Apart from the whole South/Latin/Central America regions, where apparently no Americans live.
No country in Latin America uses “America” to describe itself. What’s your problem with this?
I’ve had Argentines and Panamanians literally tell me that “We are all Americans “, so while no country uses America to officially describe itself, a lot of their inhabitants do unofficially. On a geographical level at the very least, and it’s important enough to them to bring it up in conversation.
So Argentinian and Panamanian are no longer used? Your friends sound a bit woke. In any case, some variation of Norteamericano is used all over Latin America for US citizens (often with Canadians thrown in for good measure).
Somehow I don’t think random cabdrivers, clerks and waitresses in Panama, Argentina and Uruguay are “woke”. They certainly use Panamanian or Argentinian, but they also felt the need to correct my claiming the word American as they too feel that they are residents of one of the Americas. Basically they want to know what country we come from, not what continent.
Someone forgot about New Mexico..
Their country names are consistent with their exclusive geographic names. "America," by contrast, is a geographic term for, basically, all major land masses in the western hemisphere. This whole conundrum is a consequence of what was in effect a poorly chosen name that lacks specificity.
This. A byproduct of a bad decision. Not really a worthy subject to pitch a social battle over.
In many ways the United States is the most American, based on the migrations over the years. The most jumbled population, I'd guess.
The 13 original states were the first European colonies in the Western Hemisphere to achieve independence. Each had its own locally specific name, but being in "America" was what they had in common. So "American" became the demonym for the country's people.
Yet in the end, we have all the demonyms we need. Every country in the Western hemisphere has a functional demonym. Continental and cultural-zone demonyms are available too: North Americans, South Americans, Latin Americans, Anglo Americans.
I tell my Chilean in-laws that I will be happy to stop calling myself an "American" when they stop calling me "el Gringo"
Give the gift that keeps on stabbing,
https://old.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/ztfuv0/the_wasp_a_knife_that_fills_your_target_with_a/
Perfect! And so practical!
Lets the family psychopath know you appreciate him for who he is, not for who everyone else thinks he should be, but as himself, a guy, a person, a lunatic.
Since the pretty much universally accepted word for a US Citizen is "American", I'm good with that. Everyone knows what that means.
Seriously? We're Americans. Why waste brain cycles on this?
I'm trying to think of a bigger waste of time than this. This idea had to come from the same people that came up with lantinx.
Like Latinx, it’s a top-down approach to language. But language, English especially, doesn’t work that way. The people, not the academy, are the ultimate authority.
Latinx especially is an incredibly ignorant choice of word, since it’s unpronounceable in Spanish. Latine would’ve been more consistent with how Spanish grammar actually works, but the (presumably) English speakers who came up with Latinx apparently didn’t know or care to consult actual Spanish speakers before coining their term.
The term "Latinx" was, in fact, coined by a Spanish speaker. But they intended it as a rejection of binary genders, not an imposition of gender neutrality on the whole language.
And yes, English speakers are to blame for that.
There's also "Yankee," isn't there? Often regional inside the US, but when you're outside the country everybody understands "Yankee" or "Yank" to mean "American" even if they're talking about someone with the broadest Tennessee twang.
Really, this is an old chestnut that I can remember being kicked around 60 years ago. Isn't it largely situational? When a Canadian border agent asks my citizenship I'll say "US" for sure. I could say "American" and be clearly understood without any offense but I want to be precise and I don't want to be taken for some kind of annexationist or Fenian or someone who doesn't understand that Canada is its own country.
But once I'm in the country the first thing any Canadian will say about me is that I'm American. And if something comes up where I need to identify nationality, I can always say "I'm from Pennsylvania" or something like that. Depends whether national behavior or relative power could be an issue, doesn't it?
BTW, I think they say "I'm a New Zealander" or "I'm from New Zealand." They could also say "Kiwi," unless people only use that in writing. Same issue for someone from the Seychelles? But not the Maldives.
The only person from New Zealand I know personally calls herself a Kiwi.
We are Kiwis, someone foreign referring to us (i.e an Australian - aka Aussie) might call us New Zealanders but no one anywhere would use such a messy term as New Zealandish any where.
You could (but no one does) call us Maori (which technically means someone from here - but usually is reserved for descendants of the first polynesian colonists, who we call Tangata Whenua if we mean to be that specific).
I think American works fine and makes perfecr sense given it's part of the nations name/title and isn't confusing. It's a odd conflation for anyone to confuse national and continental identities.
Yankee-Pennamite Wars?
PA won. CT doesn't extend to the Pacific (minus NYC area).
No, but it leapfrogged over PA and extended across northern Ohio. "Greater New England," though, shows up in pockets out to the West Coast.
Not many people know about those Yankee-Pennamite wars. Good on you for bringing them up.
Just to add that "Pennamite" these days sounds like something out of Q and I've never heard of anyone from here using. Or anyone from anywhere else, either, come to think of it.
That part of American history is probably only discussed in Northeastern PA, where battles were actually fought.
Glad I don't have this insane issue. I call myself Canadian, eh.
BTW, in German I think we're known as "Amis," emphasis on the first syllable. Not "Vereinis."
"Ami" in Germany is just a (sometimes slightly derogatory) colloquial abbreviation for "Amerikaner."
Generally in news reports and other contexts here in Germany the designation is "US-Amerikaner" -- as differentiated from, say, "Nordamerikaner" (all peoples from the North American continent) or "Südamerikaner" and so on.
Forgot to mention that my German husband introduces me / refers to my nationality to other people as a "US-Amerikanerin."
Thanks! That's a degree of precision in ordinary speech that seems unusual (but not necessarily out of character, I guess).
There are many quirks to the words people use to identify themselves and to identify others, and rather than fight about them I think it may be best to look at them as quirks of language and culture and leave it at that.
Lots of terms we may think of as cut and dried (e.g., British, German, Italian) have rich histories full of disputes about who is included or excluded by those terms. Another quirk. Why do words like Europe or “the Continent” traditionally refer to the mainland and not the UK?
Some of the tension has to do with empire. Did the peoples of the HRE, USSR, British Empire think of themselves as Romans, Russians (Soviets?), British? Maybe a little, maybe for a time, but in the end no. That’s why empires fall and mapmakers stay in business.
On the other hand, starting with George Washington, we’ve been successfully sold on the idea that we are, above all, “Americans.” That’s one reason why we’re still one nation.
Mess with our identity as “Americans” and you’re playing with fire. So what if it’s not exactly accurate by some other standard others want to impose. It’s not their call. People should call themselves by whatever terms they choose. Likewise, others can call us whatever they want in their own language.
(Somewhat off topic: During the World Cup there were news stories about how to pronounce Qatar. The assumption was that we should try to pronounce it as Qataris do. I’m not clear why that ought to be the rule. We don’t pronounce countries like Spain and Italy the way the Spanish and Italians do. OTOH, news reports often pronounce Hispanic names in Spanish, a custom not often applied to other languages. And we don’t spell Turkey as Türkiye, the way Turks would prefer. I don’t know who writes the rules, but it all seems rather arbitrary.)
I don't think pronunciation is so OT here, really; kind of a thing for me too. I always had to shake my head at all those people who would carefully say "PAHkeestahn" and in the same breath come out with "AyfGAANaSTAAN" like any Valley denizen. Lots of languages have their own words for places in other countries-- Parigi is Paris in Italian, Londres is London in French, Rome is Roma in English. You have to think it's allowed, by long usage if nothing else, and it's quite a big step beyond simply pronouncing what's written as if it was in your own language.
What rules or practices the networks use for this is anybody's guess. For bilinguals or people whose first language isn't English I don't see any problem with pronouncing their own names and maybe some place names ala the language of origin. But sometimes-- often-- the practice of linguistic fidelity seems forced to me. And really, what do most people say in daily life who in fact aren't reporters doing standups? Especially where they're really bilingual, ie native or near-native pronunciation in both, my experience is that they'll mostly code-switch to standard Americanish or something close because it's easier for the people they're talking to.
What you're mentioning seems to me sort of similar to the way a lot of Quebecois will be scrupulous about saying French place names in proper Quebecois when they're speaking English, but Franco-Ontarians generally don't do that. For Quebecois it tends to be very political.
One could joke that the early US had plans to conquer the entire continent. Wasn't the slogan for taking over Canada "54-40 or fight"? (That was the latitude we were going for.) Aaron Burr was involved in a plot to take over all of Mexico. It failed, but we grabbed Texas and a bit more later. We've invaded various places in Central America at varying times, and not just the Canal Zone in Panama. Throw in the Monroe Doctrine that made a claim on the whole hemisphere, and maybe we are Americans with the overall conquest a work in progress.
Usonian:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usonia
Usonian is correct. If they don't like American, let them chew on Usonian.
Aren't USOnians the folks who entertain the troops?
+1
Do the Central Africans in the Central African Republic have to put up with this?
At least the Emiratis found a dodge.
Well Brits and Aussies tend to call you "[insert favorite epithet] yanks". But honestly, you appropriate the name of two continents for your country, and then ask what you're supposed to call yourselves? That's like the Third Reich calling itself the United States of Europe and insisting they were the only people entitled to call themselves Europeans. What if every other country in the Americas had called itself some variation of 'America', instead of a unique original name? Blame the founders' pathetic lack of imagination.
Says the guy whose country stole it's name from Austria.
Almost no Europeans actually call themselves European in regular conversations. (Almost nobody anywhere in the world calls themselves by their continent vs their country.)
"which is allegedly offensive to other residents of the Americas"
I'd like to point out that what pisses off so many isn't so much that Americans (from the US) use the term Americans, but that when any American (from the Continent) calls themselves or use the term American by virtue of being from the continent, a lot of Americans(from the US) get pissy about it thinking only them should be able to use it, which is what brings the angry pointing out that that America is actually the name of the continent.
Also for what is worth, outside of Canada and the US practically no one else in the continent uses the word American to refer to US citizens. The word used as has been mentioned by others is Estadounidense, or at times the more despective term gringo.
Pissess off so many would resolve to in reality some egghead Left academics.
Speaking from other side of the Atlantic it's absurd. Everyone, Europe, Africa calls you Americans and we are not going to stop because some Latino Left Academics are bootstrapping an arch and overdone objection to a linguistic usage already centuries old.
All this illustrates is why Left academics are so generally useless politically.
Your last paragraphs isn't accurate. Estadounidense is an archaic term that might show up in some government documents but isn't used in everyday conversation. I've lived in Colombia for 8 years and have traveled throughout Latin America. The locals call me "American" or "Americano".
Yes. Or Norteamericano. Anyone who said Estadounidense would draw chuckles.
Who goes around saying “I’m an American: I’m from [Costa Rica, Brazil, Canada, etc.]”? Name names please.
Literally I’ve never encountered such a person in my life nor seen this in any movie or TV show. This entire topic seems like a solution in search of a problem. Nobody routinely refers to their continent as their primary identity. “Oh hi, I’m from Tokyo, I’m Asian.” It doesn’t happen.
I have no trouble with calling myself an American when I'm in Europe. In Latin America I'd say I was from the US. In Canada I usually identify my origin by state or (large) city, since I'd expect the people there to know the places. This carries no suggestion of aggrandizement.
Seems the neo-colonialist mind set is alive and well and as condescending as ever. Apart from leftwing students with talking points stuffed into their heads, are people in any numbers concerned with this? And is it too much to point out that in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French we are talking about two separate continents with distinct names? Am I supposed to get my nose out of joint when I’m excluded from being a South American? Now it is true that we can, on occasion, talk of ‘the Americas’. At least in English, that seems like a rare instance when the awkward phrase ‘a resident of’ makes perfect sense. But are we talking about sense or about power, the power of the self-appointed champions of the disadvantaged to police the language of others?
Not to belabor this point, but one could also point to Eurasian. A group could, I suppose, attempt to claim this term. Inevitably, some sh!t stirrer would complain, making a bad-faith argument that all the various peoples of Asia and Europe were being kept from showing their unity. It is bad faith because there is no Eurasian identity, just as there is no pan-American identity. South American? I suppose. Latin American? Same. North American? I don’t really see it. And to combine all that? Nah. You might as well talk about the shared identities wrapped up in the separate northern- and southern hemispheres.
Over the past decades, there have been movements of various marginalized groups to reclaim various derogatory terms, terms that offend some people. Is it for these groups to name themselves, or for others to determine their names for them? Queer? Latinx? You can see where all this is going, right?
Honestly, this is where the far Left shades over into the (mostly) mainstream Right. The more one attempts to grapple with the ideas, the easy contradictions, and the shameless hypocrisy, the more one is forced to the conclusion that the ideas are all just provisional instruments to advance an agenda, an agenda that is more felt than reasoned. I find large swarths of this intolerant, petty, provocative, divisive, counter productive, driven by power, and generally hateful. The mainstream Left would be well advised to push back hard against such nonsense.
Are people from Mexico allowed to call themselves Mexican? After all, that might be confusing/offensive to people from New Mexico.
What to do, what to do??? Oh, I know....let's stop inventing problems and instead focus on things that actually matter.
Earthling?
We are Koyaanisqatsians
Far-left activists do not own the English language and do not have the right to dictate how the rest of us should talk, period, full stop. I'm ignoring this.
The Star-Spangled Banner doesn't include a name for the country.
Don’t over think this. Cogito ergo sum. Full stop.
You're an American going into the bathroom, and you're an American coming out of the bathroom. But in the bathroom, European!
Maybe just call ourselves what others call us. For instance, in Mexico we are called "pochos". ;^)
The original document involved here is a Stanford IT document, which presumably is trying to teach the IT people at Stanford how to avoid offending the Stanford faculty and students.
The "American" vs "US Citizen" item appears in the "Imprecise Language" alongside avoiding "Hispanic" in favor of country of origin or "Latinx", but also alongside items like avoiding "child prostitute" in favor of "child who has been trafficked" and avoiding "Karen" in favor of "demanding or entitled White woman". It also suggests avoiding "user" in favor of "client" because user can be associated with substance abuse or exploiting other people--in other words, the term is ambiguous.
I challenge anyone in the comment section to identify a state or national politician who has proposed eliminating the usage of the word "American."
This is a major non-issue. But I would ask commenters upset about the idea of "US Citizen" vs "American" if they are equally upset about the proposed changes away from "child prostitute" or "Karen" or "user," and if not, ask why not.
In other words, folks are all upset about a style guide, yeah?
Usianoid
Someone else mentioned above that Germans speak of "US-Amerikaner". It works fine in English: I'm a US-American.
When I'm abroad, I like to say "I'm from the States." It's a sort of playful arrogance: which states? Everyone knows.
The founders didn't use the term "Americans."
The founders started off with the Articles of Confederation. That didn't work, and led to the Constitutional Convention.
You're right, the U. S. Constitution does not contain "Americans", but does include "United States of America". At the time, they considered themselves citizens of their states and the typical construction at the time was "The United States are..." (plural). It was only after the Civil War that we went to "The United States is..." (don't recall a reference off hand). In the constitution, usage is mainly "....of the United States", so no implied singular or plural use.
"The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation.”
—George Washington, in his Farewell Address
'Americans' occurs three times in the Federalist Papers, and 'American' 58 times.
People's sense of identity is deeply emotional. By whatever logic (shaky or otherwise) you may think you've discovered a flaw in the description "American," understand you're fighting a losing battle.
"I am an American." That's among the highest aspirations for people here and around the world, and it has been for centuries. Generations of people have struggled tirelessly and sacrificed everything so that they and their loved ones can say those words, and when they do they say them with extraordinary pride. By whatever circumstance you're here, chances are someone in your family tree paid a price for your right to say them too.
"I am an American": Ralph Ellison. He didn't want to be known as a Black American or an African American. He wanted only to be known as an American.
"I am an American": Saul Bellow. Those words meant so much to him they were the first four words to one of his novels.
Listen to the people is this ad:
https://youtu.be/vPIXLUrIjXg
"I am an American." The meaning of those words is not something easily deconstructed.
Fast Forward to about 7:50