American.... Not Just US Citizens

It's just more simple.

And since the other nations just are either good pro-American or rough-soon-to-be-invaded ones, who cares? :wink:

The name for citizens of the US was never coined with the intent to misrepresent ourselves as the only inhamitants of the Americas.

This is a common "knock" on the US that I have had to deal with in South America.

They call Americans "Noth Americans" in an attempt to make that point while referring to Americans.

In any acse can you come up with a replacement?

United Statians?

United States of AMERICA, I guess.

I don't think that the citizens of any of those nations in Central and South America are going to insist too hard on being identified as 'Americans'.

Actually they sometimes do. Many people in South America would respond "so am I" when i said I was "Americano".

As great, beautiful and wonderful (seriously) as the United States is, the United States is pretty pathetic if you think about it. Guess I am just an Irish girl from Boston that had the misfortune of being born in the U.S.? I am first generation "American". Brits took my family's land... I look at history and US is young, and they were not nice either.

Well, you shoulda told me it was politically loaded as opposed to just curious. I'd not have wasted the time. Oh well.

Craven -

Suggestions? Don't want to offend anyone/open up can of worms. I was just thinking on keyboard!

Kathleen

If the citizens of other countries in the Western hemisphere want to use the term for themselves as well who cares? So be it. Have fun! (Going by the "North" and "South" logic there would be 3 of them.. There are several countries in "Central America" too! )

But the whole thing is pretty trivial. "Americans" as applied to the US is something that WE were labeld by the Europeans just like the trem "Yanks". It isn't something that was generated on this side of the ocean.

You used the term "Brits". Why is the term used by/about the people of Great Britan? Aren't the people of Brittany, France "Brits" too?

No, because to their minds, they are Breton . . . maybe you could call them Brets, altough they'd give ya funny looks . . .

The problem with Yanks, or Yankees, is that the good folks who reside south of the Mason-Dixon line may take umbrage. After all there WAS a war, and the South lost! :wink:

Naw, we're just takin' a breather . . .

No, fishin', the people of Britanny are called Bretons. (At least in French, German and English-English :wink: )

I thought the term Yankees was invented by the Southern Would-Be-Non-United Statians (I LOVE that name!) to denigrate the Northern United Statians?

Now somebody is telling me the Non-Breton-Brits invented it to be rude to ALL the United Statians (whether willing or no).

Life is soooooooooooooo confusing....

Brits apply the term Yanks to all Americans, which engenders a good deal of teeth grinding among southerners among U.S. citizens. Most Americans apply the term to those from New England, although the word Yankee was originally coined to describe New Yorkers, although i've forgotten why.

My dictionary says it has something to do with Dutch Jan Kees or John Cheese and a mistaken plural.

Where is that etymology thread when we need it?

That would make sense, the Brits stole New York from the Dutch at the end of the third Anglo-Dutch war . . .

Well it's kinda like calling yourself an "Irish Girl" and an "American" at the same time.

I never, ever call myself an Irish girl . . .

Surely if you are born and raised in Ireland, then you are Irish.
If you are born and raised in America, then you are American. Maybe an American of Irish descent.

Besides, every country has issues with sections that they want to separate from themselves, such as:
Ireland/Northern Ireland.
England/Scotland/Wales.