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Comment by themitigating | Hacker News Reader

It's incorrect but widely assumed that if someone says "America" they mean the USA.

What's funny about it?

There's nothing incorrect about the fact that "American" refers specifically to the USA. Compare this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans

> Americans are the citizens and nationals of the United States of America.

Okay, TIL. However, if you look at the "language versions" of that Wikipedia page, that also explains my confusion:

Deutsch: "US-Amerikaner" Español: "Estadounidense" Italiano: "Statunitensi" ...

so there are plenty of languages that do make a distinction between "American living on the American continent(s)" and "American from the US". Full disclosure: I'm from Germany...

Minor quible, but most spanish speakers I know refer to people from the USA as Americanos. Estadounidenses gets used as part of legalese and in the context of non US nationalism.

One more data point. In my experience in Spain people definitely use estadounidense outside of legal documents. You could hear, or read, "la artista estadounidense", for instance.

"Americano" is used too, as well as "afroamericano" (not "afroestadounidense").

I'm a native Spanish speaker and most, if not all, people I know use "Estadounidenses" or "yankees" (colloquially). I do see "Americanos" used in translated media though.

Fun fact: an "Americano" also means an espresso with water added

Which is borrowed from Italian, not Spanish.

Ditto for Italian: "Americani" is much more common than "Statunitensi".

It's funny: when Americans realize we're saying the name of a foreign city badly, like Peking for Beijing, Canton for Guangzhou, and others, we move to assimilate our naming to that of the natives. Why is it that everyone insists that we refer to ourselves by the wrong name? Is it even possible for us to be wrong about what we call ourselves?

They're not insisting anything though right? They've only said it's funny and confusing. That you consider them to be insisting is interesting. I'm British so I've never been on the receiving end of any of that insistence, but from your response I assume it must happen frequently.

What I really want to contribute here though is that your "we" from "what we call ourselves" doesn't include me. Like a lot of people outside the US, English is my native language and calling Americans Americans has always given me pause for thought. So I put it back to you:

Is it even possible for us to be wrong about what we call you?

Just as a note: Peking was a corruption by French missionaries, not Americans.

In general, these kinds of errors come from historical limitations: orthography, linguistics, &c. At minimum, it’s respectful to try to adapt based on our better, contemporary understanding.

> Just as a note: Peking was a corruption by French missionaries, not Americans.

What? Peking wasn't a corruption at all. It accurately reflects the pronunciation encountered by... most Europeans who interacted with Chinese. Mandarin received official status in the 20th century.

>There's nothing incorrect about the fact that "American" refers specifically to the USA. Compare this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans > Americans are the citizens and nationals of the United States of America.

Also from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American :

American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America"

And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas :

The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America.

That Canada is also located in America, and if someone from Canada identifies "America" with the US they are belittling their own country? I mean, the sentence wouldn't have been less understandable if they had used "US-style" instead of "American-style"?

>That Canada is also located in America,

I didn't downvote you but to explain what you see as an inconsistency: all forms of language and terms don't always match the mathematical/geometric/spatial definitions.

- geometry view: North America is the continent and both Canada & USA are spatial subsets

- conversational language view: "America" is linguistically used as synonym for "USA" without any confusion because of context

Same idea as recent news headlines that say, "Asian powers are unlikely to ease Russia's economic woes"[1]

If one is stuck on the geography fact that Russia is actually the largest country in Asia and bigger than China, that headline makes no sense. (Why can't an Asian power like Russia ease its economic woes?!?) But if you accept that "Asia powers" is often a synonym for "China/India" that excludes Russia, the intended meaning can be parsed.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Asian+powers+are+unlikely+to...

Everyone uses the term "America" to the US and even if they are referring to the both continents they say "The Americas".

There isn't even a contient named "America"

"America" was originally what is now called South America. Mercator then called "America" both North and South. Then common use in English forced "America" to mean United States of America only. Schoolchildren in the rest of the countries are told "America" is a continent united by a continuous mountain range going from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. I guess this will go away once education is globalized and homogenized into mainstream corporate narratives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas#Etymology_and_naming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Cordillera

Yeah, sorry, if North and South America are all one continent, then Europe, Asia, and Africa are all one continent, too. In fact the Darien Gap is completely impassible, very much unlike the Urals or the Sinai.

>Yeah, sorry, if North and South America are all one continent, then Europe, Asia, and Africa are all one continent, too. In fact the Darien Gap is completely impassible, very much unlike the Urals or the Sinai.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent

North America and South America are treated as separate continents in the seven-continent model. However, they may also be viewed as a single continent known as America. This viewpoint was common in the United States until World War II, and remains prevalent in some Asian six-continent models. The single American continent model remains the more common view in France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Latin American countries.

The Darien Gap is "impassable" only because it is a protected forest and therefore roads and railways are not allowed.

I know a number of mexican people who hate that dubious automatic America / USA association.

How about when Iran chants “Death to America”? Do they feel the same way?

In Europe they consider North, Central, and South America to all be one continent called, "America."

Can't say for everyone else, but here there are America and South America. Therm term North America is a pretty much used only in geo and historic contexts, almost never in a political one.

Ahh I didn't know that. I remember being there in high school and our tour guide laughing when we said there were 7 continents. Here it's always "N.A."

I feel your gripe, in Québec we sometimes make a point of saying "états-uniens" (rather than "américains") which rolls of the tongue smoothly, but United Statians doesn't ring as well in English. What good word is there to call Americans other than Americans? I've never heard someone use another term in English.

However if it's belittling Canada, it's certainly belittling the other 55 countries of the Americas that seem forgotten in this thread (say 54, Mexico is mentioned).

"US Citizen" or "from the US" tends to get used if trying to avoid the word American or be more specific. But "American" is definitely much, much more common.

I mean, that works for people of any country/region, but it doesn't really solve the misnomer that is the name designating habitants of the USA. That is, if it even is a misnomer for being "non-inclusive", after all the USA is the only country with America in it's name, while the preceding part of the name is kind of descriptive. We don't use "Democratic Republics", "United" and "Islands" for designating people from countries with those, maybe it's fair to do the same with Americans (tho Americans say the US/United States so it's also fair to use that as a base for the name).

"US citizen" excludes a huge number of people who live in the USA but do so without the benefits of citizenship, so that isn't great either. "American" being synonymous with "people from the USA" may not be completely accurate but it seems the best of available options.

Which is amusing because the official name of Mexico is “ Estados Unidos Mexicanos” which is “états-uniens” also.

Which is something I've heard for the first time in this thread. I understand it's true, but isn't it a bit of a legal formality? When you go thru Mexican customs, it says Mexico, not Estados Unidos Mexicanos or United Mexican States (from the North). The passport says Mexico in bold on top and the full formal name on the crest. The U.N. seat's plate says Mexico.

Americans tend to even abbreviate their country to the US or United States, which makes états-uniens fair game in my book. I could be off base, but do Mexicans ever designate their country as Estados Unidos?

They don't, partially because "that name" is already taken by the so-called America.

Arguably their name translates as "United Mexican States" whereas the USA has "of America" in it, nobody calls it the "United American States".

My petition to rename the USA to solve this by labeling everything MURICA has stalled in committee it seems.

I wonder if there are any other United Kingdoms out there besides Britain.

Apparently not https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/official-... - the UK name is a particular oddity based on how it came about (most other "united kingdoms" have probably become republics or absorbed the smaller kingdom).

Yank. Historically based, no ambiguity.

There's a lot of ambiguity. Yes, many people outside the US use the term to refer to people from the US in general, but technically Yanks/Yankees are only the people from New England (the Northeastern US states). Someone from the US South or West aren't Yankees.

I thought this was referring to us-ians outside the us. Granted there are regional differences inside that are unknown outside. But to the rest of the English speaking world, yank is from the us. And Canadians aren’t Americans, Scots aren’t British or English and only a smaller portion of the Irish won’t get real offended if they’re not called Irish.

Significant differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada but unless they’ve visited they probably going to lump them all as Canadians. Pro tip: try not to do this, listen for the accent.

Canada is located in North America.

In English at least 'Canada is also located in America' is not correct. It should either be 'Canada is also located in the Americas' or 'Canada is also located in North America'.

You are confusing America, the continent, with America the country.

In conventional English, in most of the world, United States residents are called "Americans."

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