If You Call Yourself American

Citizens of the U.S.A. tend to call themselves "Americans". To others, particularly those we share the hemisphere with, this undoubtedly reinforces their perception of us as arrogant.

How about the little fact that the U.S. is the only country in the world with "America" in its official title? Are you SURE that isn't reason to abbreviate its citizens as "Americans"? Oh, but actually explaining it takes away the fun of mindless America-bashing. See official country names list at http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/4250.htm (this is obviously official English names; feel free to provide URLs that give the equivalent in the other 6,000 world languages). [copied from AmericanCulturalAssumption]

I'd like to propose a post-MonroeDoctrine?/ManifestDestiny? basis for calling ourselves "American".

From colonial days, when there were the Americans and the British. Until about 1760, Canada was French.

To be an American is to be a citizen of the Western hemisphere (Does this include western Antarctica? -- internal nitpicker) (Western? if the line between western and eastern emisphere is the Greenwich meridian, Spain is America... - another nitpicker :-), which implicates a responsibility (among others) to learn the languages of the hemisphere. Spanish, English, Portuguese, French [you forgot all of the native languages, like quechua, currently (Does this apply to the Quebecois, many of whom disdain English?) used and very spread]. Those are only the obvious ones. Think of San Francisco. Think of Toronto. Sao Paolo. Chiapas. How many languages there?

Hang on! If we say, "To be an American is to be a citizen of the Western Hemisphere", it does not follow that "Spain is America" or "Western Antartica is America". If we said "To be from the Western Hemisphere is to be an American", then those arguments would follow... It's like "All Penguins are flightless birds, but not all flightless birds are Penguins" - Or have I missed something? -- Yet another nitpicker

And all the dialects!

No, it does not. No more than calling oneself "European" requires one to speak English, Gaelic, Welsh, French, German, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Italian, Romanque, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Bulgarian, Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Greek, Romanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Russian, and my apologies to anyone I've left out, and plus or minus one's definition of "Europe". -- MikeSmith

I know very few people who call themselves "European". IMO it's a politically motivated term, in this context, invented by the people who would force a "European Union" by lying to their citizens/subjects/electorate. Still, this is a whole other argument which belongs elsewhere .. and I'm weary of it already. -- MatthewAstley

If, say, Germans used the term "European" as a synonym for "German", that would be a parallel. Residents of the U.S.A. who casually call themselves "Americans" are likely to have little or no understanding of the other cultures of this hemisphere. It's a kind of know-nothing isolationism. -- tr

Culture's the real trouble. We Americans call ourselves that because that's what we learned. Furthermore, we don't have anything else to call ourselves, at least in English. The MexicanLanguage? (Mexican language??? Are we by any chance talking about SPANISH???? offers "estadosunidenses" (IT WOULD BE ESTADOUNIDENSES) , but they also refer to the nation-state as "Los Estados Unidos" exclusively, without ever mentioning "America". (My Ecuadorian colleague informs me that her people refer to citizens of the USA as gringos). I think French does the same. Brits I've talked to refer to "Americans" as the occupants and citizens of the USA. Spaniards seem to use "Americanos" for that purpose. It's just a name. Notice that you don't hear me calling myself a "North American". It's a fact, but that's a continent. (It's a fact that you are North American, but it's not a fact that North America is a continent)--AL. In English, America is a country, North and South America are continents, and together they are the Americas (plural). (You're wrong! You should learn that North and South America are not two different continents. They are part of the American continent. And don't forget about Central America. North America, Central America and South America are all part of the continent; together they are the Continent of America) --AL. in the same continent, America.If you see your people as oppressed by another group whose stated name is confusingly similar to that of an entity of which you are a part, you'll take offense at the name. Witness the discord between hackers, crackers, and the media.

It's not the same in French. When I visit my friends in Quebec, I am "un americain," not "un États-Unisiainiain". (I'd be looked at pretty funny for that one.) And to the few French and Belgian friends I've had it's the same. I suppose if I wanted to keep from offending anyone I could say I'm "un citoyen des États-Unisiain", but that's a mouthful. Besides, the European francophones probably don't care and many Quebecois like me better as an American than as a western Canadian anyway. If the peoples of the South and Central American continents are the only ones that really care, I'd be perfectly happy calling myself a gringo when I meet them :)

Agreed. Also, few people call themselves Europeans very probably because there isn't any country with such a generic name as the United States of Europe. Everyone from the Americas is an American, but you don't see Brazilians calling themselves Americans. Nor is Mexico called the United States of American Mexico. It's just the people of the USA's way of identifying themselves, not of being 'know-nothing isolationists'. -- A.S.

You need LeavesOfGrass in your back pocket, BowlingForColumbine in your personal mp5 player, and OptimisticProgramming in your SpiritPack?.

I'm a UsAmerican?, Chicago style. And I don't know enough languages. And I don't know LeavesOfGrass by heart. And I don't understand CharltonHeston?. So I haven't met the requirements for AmerIcan? citizenship.

-- TomRossen 200212140145 (edited to destig my sig and thank the anonymous samaritan for the PoemWiki link.) (they're often known as AnonymousDonors)

Okay, but if I change it now, your comment would look weird. So change it. What isn't signed is ready for refactoring. Even what is signed, if you're careful/polite.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that the US is named after a continent (well, two continents). So the short form of "United States of America" is most sensibly "America", which is more descriptive than "United States", even if people know which United States you're talking about. I mean, people from the "Federal Republic of Germany" don't call themselves "Federal Republicans".

I wonder if part of the confusion stems from the fact that a) the US is a nation, but not an ethnicity or b) perhaps the name USA, by encompassing two continents in its name, speaks to the then-popular belief in manifest destiny. That's mostly just idle theorizing, though; I don't know the history of the name very well.

At any rate, different countries care about this at varying degrees. A curious thing to note is that Latin Americans tend to be very adamant about not calling USians "Americanos" - they use "Estadounidenses" instead. But in my experience, Spaniards just use "Americanos". Less syllables. -- francis

Canadians call people from the U.S. Americans, but they tend to call the country "the States", not "America".

As I recall from my brief time up there in The Great White North, there, eh? Canadians refer to USAians as "Yanks". It's kinda like the way we use "kraut", "frog", "limey", etc. Not nearly as ethnically rude as "spic", "wop", "pollack", etc. Actually, I don't think anybody else in the civilized world is as ethnically rude to anybody else as we 'Murkins are to everybody else. -- MartySchrader [Yes. We should get someone from Bosnia, or Rwanda, or Sudan to teach us about ethnic sensitivity.]

Really? Immigrant friends of mine have told me exactly the opposite, that Americans are far more tolerant and welcoming toward foreigners than people in many other countries. Certainly I wouldn't say that Western European attitudes towards non-white immigrants are particularly enlightened. I learned some quite snarky terms for non-white immigrants (particularly Algerians) from a Frenchman. (Macaca? -- TheerasakPhotha)

That's just one country. Britain, I understand, has also always had a de facto problem with racism, particularly against blacks. Germany and some of the other Northern European countries seem better in this respect. (Often times, where I fail to find an article on some Thai subject in the English Wikipedia, I go to the German variant instead... FWIW, I translated SriIndraditya? to English :)) Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a backlash against pluralism in the Netherlands recently; IIRC, there was some proposal being kicked around that Dutch citizens would be required to speak Dutch in public, even in a personal conversation. I think this is going too far, but can see that violent fundamentalism (murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh) could cause such a problem. -- TheerasakPhotha

From my experience, we Canadians usually refer to the country as America and the people living there as Americans. The States is used, but less frequently, and Yanks is mostly used derogatively.

From mine, the country is called "The States" or "The US", and the people are called "Americans". The term 'Yanks' is never used. Note that the term 'yankee' is used by southerners for an inhabitant of a northern state in the United States.

Yankee: To a European, an American. To a US southerner, a northerner. To a northerner, someone from New England. To someone from New England, a Vermonter. To a Vermonter, someone who eats apple pie for breakfast.

Where is this quoted from? 'Yankee Doodle' is the state song of Connecticut, so I would have thought people from Connecticut are the Yankees of New England.

Yankee Doodle indeed does has a varied history. The version with the 'stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni' was originally an English song deriding 'yanks' for being unsophisticated country bumpkins, but it has roots prior to those words in the Netherlands and England calling other people names. -- JamesKeogh

I get the impression that Canadians disagree. They seem to be offended if I mistake one for an American, in a very similar way to a New Zealander mistaken for an Australian. This leads me to wonder whether Canadians [that I've met] have completely swallowed this line you now reject, that America == USA. -- MatthewAstley

Yeah - just another indignity that we've heaped on our northern neighbors. So are you a Brit? -- tr

Yes. Imagine the offence though if it turned out I was Irish! 8-)

Or French. -- tr

I don't know, but I suspect it would just be taken as a mistake, or even a compliment on my command of English. If I were French though, you'd better not accuse me of being Belgian (or is this one the other way around?). I wonder if there's a graph of these things, somewhere?

Yes, there is a graph. See http://www.exile.ru/151/materials/europeans-chart.html

I never got to do the experiment in the end, but I suspect that a pair of tourists in (the Republic of) Ireland could amuse themselves getting alternate warm and cold welcomes, if one were American and the other English, and they took turns in asking directions.

I have a more romantic philosophical view on this whole deal. I am a limey (as an aside - I wonder how many of us still know the reason behind that nickname? I seem to be in the minority who do!) that is now a US citizen. I proudly call myself American not because of my citizenship or my geographical location, but because of what it *means* to be an American. To this end, I believe that you do not have to be a US citizen to be American, and that there are many "natural born" US citizens that are *not* American. I often draw comparison between America and the concept of Rome (the Roman ideal). To me, the term "American" has come to mean one who embraces the validity of InalienableRights (life liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and the US Bill of Rights in general, and who can truly empathise with the Declaration of Independence.

I think that rapid changes to the US population, like immigration for example( http://www.visa2003.com/citizenship/dual.htm) are redefining what it means to be a US citizen and an American.

I was never inspired by life as a Crown Subject, hated it in fact, but I am now an utterly inspired patriotic American. A truly uniquely special nation, people and creed.

</flag waving> ;-)

-- DanKane

Limey: Citrus-loving British sailor with no scurvy.

I find it fascinating that you draw a distinction between people who just happen to live in these United States, and the smaller group of people who really "believe in" the DeclarationOfIndependence, BillOfRights, etc.

I'm pretty sure you could draw a similar distinction between people who just happen to live on the islands of the UnitedKingdom, and the smaller group of people who have a lot of respect for traditions of the UnitedKingdom (the Isle of Avalon, Logres, Camelot, etc.).

I wonder... does the same sort of distinction happens in every country?

I cannot quite tell if you are trying to convey incredulity, or genuine fascination (in an intellectual sense), with my distinction... let me reassure you that I am not trying to be offensively contentious in any way ;-) I will tentatively assume you mean to convey the latter, for which I would thank you sincerely!

We have a clear(ish), legal definition of what it is to be a US citizen, which does not support my viewpoint at all... this I freely acknowledge and accept. I do, however, find it sad that citizenship of, membership of, allegiance to, the United States of America is cheapened by the almost total focus on its mechanical provisions - medicare, social security, voting rights etc.

Ultimately, the hard truth is that we're just human beings living our lives on a particular chunk of dirt, separated from other chunks of dirt by large amounts of wet stuff. I believe that how we behave individually defines us in the eyes of others. How we interact socially defines us all as communities. How communities interact nationally defines us to, and positions us among, the rest of the world. In the space of a few hundred years, the USA has advanced philosophically, economically and politically far beyond the rest of the world. In light of the forced introspection driven largely by the terrible events of 9/11, I see a cusp ahead... one that we will leap only if we identify and discard those among us who seek to corrupt the American ideal for the sole benefit of their political careers. Achieving this, reasserting the intellectual purity of the founding fathers, and embracing what it *is* to be an American, will ensure freedoms for many more generations to come than have passed.

The same distinction in every country? Perhaps. Certainly in the UK, although I find it hard to identify your examples ;-) I would imagine that the "true" British would be those that consider themselves as ever-loving subjects of the monarchy, are respectfully governed, and that accept their place in society. I consider this a pitiful existence, but that is their choice. As for other countries, I am not qualified to say with any certainty, as this requires an understanding of how deep their national vision and identity runs. I find it hard to imagine my distinction being true in brutalized 3rd world countries such as Somalia, for instance, but again I maintain that I am not qualified to judge.

Do you really think day to day life in Britain is that much different than it is in the U.S., for an average citizen? No one really has any rights after all... only opportunities, which he either uses or doesn't. Remember when the Feds tried (unsuccessfully) to bust Phil Zimmerman for writing encryption software for personal use? And notice that MPlayer is developed in Europe for a reason. -- TheerasakPhotha

"IfYouCallYourselfAmerican", you had better do more than just live here ;-) It is a precious thing.

-- DanKane

Elsewhere on Wiki this has been pointed out, but the name is the United States of America. Thus the term american is very appropriate. More so, in fact, than many other terms, e.g. Swiss for a member of the Confederation Helvitica (that's right, the name is NOT Switzerland)?

Relating this discussion to the multitude of ethnic subcategories of Americans (people from the USA), i.e. African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Native Americans, etc., I thought the point is to refer to a people how they want to be referred to. I use the term "Native American" because many of that group find "Indian" rude (in addition to being a blatant misnomer). I use "African-American" because my friends have told me directly that other terms are rude. I am an American and I want to be called an American. Not a USAian (?). If you asked me this I wouldn't even know what you were talking about. This does NOT mean that I think I'm the sole proprietor of "The Americas". It is not arrogance, it is what I know. Trying to call me something else runs counter to my internalized sense of identity. Terms like these aren't arbitrary nouns to be debated, they are a deep-rooted part of a person's identity. I would never offend someone by calling them something that I think is appropriate in spite of their own feelings of what they "are".

I find it odd that many "African-Americans" only want descendents of slaves to be referred to in that way. With those families having lived in America so long and claiming no allegiance to any nation in Africa, why do they insist on this name? For correctness, I argue that people actually immigrating from Africa be called AfricanAmerican like several employees at my local WalMart. -- WillGray

I agree wholeheartedly with what you said on the use of 'Indian'. It's dumb and it needs to be stopped. Those people are descended from Mongoloid stock anyway. This '-American' stuff is really annoying, though. If, for instance, you see a man of darkly colored skin at some meeting, do you refer to him as 'African-American'? What if he's Sinhalese-American? What if he's Australian Aboriginal-American? What if he's LintonKwesiJohnson? and not American at all? I don't like tacking '-American' on to the end of every ethnic group; it's overly verbose, inaccurate, and annoying. If you don't automatically assume someone is a pimp or drug dealer, that's good enough for me. -- TheerasakPhotha
I'm just curious what we residents of the United States of America might be called (in English) if not "Americans". Nothing short, descriptive, and derivative comes to mind at the moment (although it is a bit late at night, curse this addictive wiki!). The best I can think of is "Staters", which is perhaps even more vague than "Americans". (Similar problem with "free software" which is unambiguously expressed in other languages, e.g. libre vs gratis)

I've actually thought about the correctness of "American" a fair bit, and changed my position a few times. From what I can see, it is related to the question over the preposition, "of": are we "the United States which are located in America", or "the United States which constitute a country called America", or something else? Perhaps we should come up with a more original name, rather than borrowing the name of the continent (which is in turn borrowed from the explorer...) Am I jealous of other countries for having real names? Maybe. -- JohnCroisant?

Although American refers to the US, Native American always includes the pre-European settlers of Canada, and sometimes Latin America. Maybe because the borders weren't up when they came here?

The whole concept is just people looking for more guilt over being American. I've never heard anyone from anywhere in the Americas complain that they wanted to call themselves Americans but didn't get the chance. Try telling New Zealanders that they should call themselves Australian (because New Zealand is part of the continent of Australia) and see how far you get. Most people identify themselves by a national identity, rather than one based on continent. The fact that the national identify for the USA uses the same term you might apply to the continent is a historical accident but is not actually a problem as long as no more than 1 nation per continent wants to use it (ref Australia). There's plenty of things you can feel guilty about for being a citizen of the USA without needing to make stuff up.

The continent of Australia is just that: Australia. Neither New Zealand nor any of the islands of the Pacific are on a continent. Often you'll hear the area (including Australia) referred to as "Oceania" or "Australasia", but it is not a continent in a geological sense.

It is not arrogant to call yourselves American. It is eurocentric. From the (old) European perspective, you are American. South Americans are South Americans. North American indigines are Indians - because early Europeans did not know that the Americas were stuck between them and India - when they bumped into it the first time, they thought they must have reached India, so the locals became indians.

So referring to yourselves as American is acknowledging the European roots of the US.

I agree with DanKane above, but from the opposite side. I was born on land currently occupied by the United States, but I am not an "American", because I do not respect the principles of the regime nor do I pledge my allegiance. I prefer to be referred to as a "Terrestrial", or "Earthsider". -- AnonymousDonor

Without Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine, Seven Years War, the name of U.S.A. should be "England 2th part", "British America" o simply "Royaume de l'Amerique Est (Probably, a more funny country, hahahaha). Never a superpower.

In spanish (RAE), "America" are all the lands in western hemisphere, north, central and south-America. Simply. U.S. people call their country "America" because they can the power to do it. If Brazil were the superpower, they can change the name to "Brazilland", and, all in the continent people should obey, for cultural imposition.

When Columbus discover the new world, he discovered "America", not "U.S.A". (But never really discovered us, we already knew we were here ...).

Spanish speakers are not agree with "american" for US citizens, specialy in latin america. They (us) call themselves like "americans" in fact, like "inhabitants of the continent" independent of each country. While more southern, more people feel like "american", because they are under less cultural influence of U.S.A.

For us, "estadounidense" is the best word to call them. "Gringo" also, is more funny... -- Cristian Molina F.

Benjamin Franklin apparently thought that using the term "American" would act as a means of uniting the many diverse peoples within the separate colonies. He apparently starting using the term in all of his many writings. Apparently it worked?

See: EnglishOrBritish

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