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Comment by dmayle | Hacker News Reader

You could educate yourself, you know, instead of trying to regurgitate something that someone else said that you thought looked clever.

What would you call Americans? United Statesians?

There are two countries called the United States in North America, there's the United States of Mexico, and the United States of America. People from the United States of Mexico are called Mexicans, and people from the United States of America are called Americans.

And what about people from the continent of North America? There's called North Americans, just like people from South America are called South Americans.

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> There are two countries called the United States in North America

No, actually, there aren't.

> there's the United States of Mexico, and the United States of America.

No, México’s formal English name (which is an exact literal translation of its Spanish name) is United Mexican States (it is Estados Unidos Mexicanos not Estados Unidos de México)

> Estados Unidos Mexicanos

I think this would translate to Mexican United States ; you're mixing up the word order.

> I think this would translate to Mexican United States

If Estados Unidos existed in Spanish as a compound, non-proper, noun phrase—that is, if "a united states" was a generic name for a thing—rather than Unidos and Mexicanos both being adjectives that modify Estados, then that would be a plausible translation. But that's (1) not the case, and (2) even if it was the case, that's not how it is used in the actual official name of the country of México.

> you're mixing up the word order.

To be clear, you are asserting that the government of México messed up the word order in its own official English name.

Sorry, I did not realize this was the official translation.

I was just commenting on the fact that adjective order in Spanish is usually reversed vs. the English one, and the adjective closest to the noun remains closest to the noun.

Wikipedia mentions that an alternate official name is Estados-Unidos Mexicanos:

> All three federal constitutions (1824, 1857, and 1917, the current constitution) used the name Estados Unidos Mexicanos[29]—or the variant Estados-Unidos Mexicanos,[30] all of which have been translated as "United Mexican States"

Interesting that it's still translated this way. I'm wondering if there are some political considerations there (eg to avoid being called the "Mexican US"). Thanks for your response. I learned something today.

Well, yes. In spanish we use "estadounidense" a lot.

In Spanish, which is not English

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No, we don't.

The terms “yank” and “seppo” were more common in older generations of Australians. If you could go back to the 1940s, I think you’d hear both terms a lot (in certain informal contexts)

One still occasionally hears “yanks”, but it is quite rare. “Seppos”, one more often hears joking about calling Americans that than anyone actually doing so-and the rare occasions the term is used (as opposed to merely mentioned), are (in my personal experience) self-conscious exercises in derogatory jocularity-related jocular coinages are “Sepponians” and “Seppostanis”

Of course, it is a big country, and terms which have fallen out of general use may be retained or revived in some pockets-I can only describe my own personal experiences

>What would you call Americans? United Statesians? Personally I call them Burgers.

> What would you call Americans? United Statesians?

US-Americans

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