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Comment by edanm | Hacker News Reader

"There is no ambiguity when someone says "I am American," as people from only one country identify themselves as such."

That's... not really true? I mean, it's true in the sense that everyone "knows" that when you say American, you mean "someone from the US". But that doesn't mean it doesn't bother people from other countries in the Americas. And even if they speak e.g. Spanish, they will tend to also speak English, so it's not like they aren't exposed to this concept.

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Of course it's true. You say yourself, everyone knows what it means. It's totally unrelated to say that not everyone likes the usage.

Still ambiguous, even if people guess right.

Please let me know which countries have "America" in their name and I will be happy to refer to people from any of them as "Americans".

You must never call anyone "European" and "Asian" then, owing to the lack of countries incorporating those terms in their names.

I think a reason this is less noticeable to people from the United States is because our continental model is different from the model taught in Latin America (7-Continent vs 6-Continent). In Argentina, for instance, you're more likely to learn there is one continent called 'America' that encompasses what people from the US consider two continents - North and South America. So for a person from the United States there is no conflict in referring to people from a continent vs. their own country because they are all distinct. A person could be 'North American', 'South American', 'American' or even 'Latin American' and the terms are completely clear and distinct to someone from the United States. There is no term that groups people from both North & South America together in English (that I am aware of). This naturally causes problems for people that don't think about continents that way and feel that 'American' referring solely to people from the US is condescending because it uses the continental term they are accustomed to and also excludes them from it. While I agree it is condescending, I think it is unintentionally so, and it is rooted more in language and geographic convention. While I try to be aware of it and avoid using the term 'American' where it might cause offense there isn't a widely adopted alternative in English. The opposite is the case in Spanish, where it would be quite rude to refer to oneself as American when one means Estadounidense because thats the term that matches the culture, language, and convention.

Indeed, when people try to refer in English to the concept of "the American continent", they usually have to say "the Americas".

I think some people's Spanish has adopted this habit, saying e.g. "los pueblos de las Américas" or "las culturas de las Américas" more than "los pueblos americanos" or "las culturas americanas", but I don't have a broad enough exposure to Spanish to understand its prevalence and connotations clearly. (Maybe it's most common in the U.S. due to influence from English?)

That's actually not a bad point, and probably one of the reasons "American" caught on, together with the fact that "United States" is 1) ambiguous (other countries are/were called "United States of X", I believe and 2) very hard to turn into a catchy name for the people.

Doesn't negate the point of how some people feel about this.

South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela

Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama

North America: US, Canada, Mexico

i.e. The Americas

But American is just shorthand of United States of America, and rolls off the tongue better.

I postulate that most Americans aren’t trying to claim all of the Western Hemisphere, it’s just what’s currently being used.

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