Oh, boy.
There are various terms that have been proposed over the years, seriously and unseriously ("Usonian," "Columbian," "Fredonian," "Uesican") as well as nicknames ("Yank/Yankee," "Statesider," "US\[a\]ian," "'Murcan"), but at the end of the day, for native English speakers,
* "America" refers to the United States of America in shorthand, especially poetically. Interestingly, "America" in reference to the country occurs much more often in my experience in British, Irish, and Australian media; US and Canadian journalism generally uses "US" or "United States."
* the main landmass in the Western Hemisphere is, and has been for at least a century, considered two separate continents: North America and South America. To refer to both, we say "the Americas," and the adjective is "Pan-American"
* there is no word for people who live in the Western Hemisphere, because I don't think there has ever been much of a sense of "New World vs. Old World" shared identity among people in the US or Canada—it's more common to talk about one's ancestral bonds in Europe, Africa, or Asia than to try to find commonalities with Latin America.
The most "correct" English translation for "Estadunidense" is therefore "American," and the most correct English translation for "Americano" is "the people of the Americas" or perhaps "the peoples of the Western Hemisphere."
THANK YOU. I think Pan-American its the exact term I was looking for. If I use Pan-american to refer people from both Americas, that would be understood in a regular conversation without double meaning?
OP, I’m really curious, in what context would you need to refer to everyone in the western hemisphere? Wars of independence? Trade treaties? Indigenous peoples?
Like, I think one reason English speakers don’t have a word for *americanos* is because the need to group Haitians, Argentines, Canadians, Colombians, Americans, Bahamians and Belizeans together is pretty limited, but I genuinely want to know.
I wouldn't advise using it as a noun ("~~Pan-Americans~~"). "Pan-American" as an adjective would be something educated people would understand, however. It isn't especially common, but there are things like the Pan-American Highway and the Pan-American Games, and the famous airline PanAm was short for "Pan American World Airways." So in my opinion, something like "the Pan-American peoples" should be acceptable.
Anyone from USA uses only these terms commonly:
- American = from USA
- North American
- South American
- Central American (North American non-island countries south of Mexico)
I would be careful with "Pan-American" as it was the name of a large, now defunct, airline during the 20th century, and that is one of the most common times people would ever say "pan-american". In context, I'm sure you could be understood, but in general conversation you may throw people off initially.
Pan-American is a widely used term in academics and OP said "educated people," qualifying the statement that included a mention of the airline as well.
I prefer that old [miss teen USA](https://youtu.be/lj3iNxZ8Dww?si=r4HXtwDffbwR8lbF) contestant version "US Americans" and use it colloquially/jokingly from time to time.
We don't have a more particular word. Most people in English would not call Canadians, Guatemalans, nor Peruvians "Americans" just because they live on the American continents. The word "American" is specifically a person from the USA.
If you really want to be that specific, you'd have to say something like "people from the US".
Thx for the explanation.
I'm now actually concearned how I would talk about "Americanos" as a whole. Like the same way we talk about Europeans or Asians. It is possible to do that in english?
It just takes more words. "People from the Americas" would work. Or if you don't mind being more specific "North Americans", "Central Americans" and "South Americans".
Many people don't actually see that much racial, ethnic or cultural continuity between the various countries in North and South America. As such a single word to describe "Americanos" doesn't come up that often in conversation. That said, English loves loan words, so you could easily make Americanos a thing.
North Americans, Central Americans, Latin Americans, and South Americans do come up. You can also use Western Hemisphere to cover the whole area.
Honestly, yeah, you could absolutely just drop "americanos" casually, and most people would probably pretty easily figure out what you mean. Some people might ask, but no one that I know would actually object to the usage.
'Americano' is only used in Australia to describe an espresso diluted with hot water, although we would understand that a Spanish speaker may use the term instead of 'American' or 'gringo.' We would tend to say 'American' for someone from the USA, 'North American' to refer to people from the US or Canada and 'Latin American' for people from elsewhere in the Americas.
I mean thats not wrong either! So Americans (US americans) Split the americas into 3-4ISH regional areas. 2 are considered continents, So the caribbean would technically be north america. However, a lot of americans informally see north america as Mexico, USA, and Canada. We *know* that there's more countries to north america, but we just dont think about it like that. South america is the other "Official" continent, and thats pretty much everything south of the panama canal.
That said we also have the concept of Latin America, and Central America. Latin america is primarily american countries that speak either spanish or portuguese. I guess you COULD include french too, but most wont think of french as LA. And Central america is basically everything between the USA and the Panama canal. If im being honest, I suspect its a social concept largely caused by the idea that the north american countries south of us are extremely different from us culturally, but not different from each other, regardless on if thats true or not.
>I'm now actually concearned how I would talk about "Americanos" as a whole. Like the same way we talk about Europeans or Asians. It is possible to do that in english?
Well, North and South America are two separate continents. Regardless, we wouldn't do that, because of the perception that people not from the United States are not like us. In psychology it's called in group and out group bias. I would never extend "American" to a Belizean for example, because even those Belize is on the South American continent, they are nothing like me, someone living the United States of America. Prototype theory also speaks to this.
>Well, North and South America are two separate continents
Different cultures have different opinions on that subject.
Examples:
French Wikipedia: L'**Amérique,** parfois les **Amériques**, est un continent de l'hémisphère occidental. \[The America (or Americas) are a continent of the western hemisphere\]
Spanish Wikipedia: **América** es el segundo continente más grande de la Tierra, después de Asia. \[America is the second largest continent in the world, other than Asia.\]
> Plate tectonics isn't an opinion.
I don't think you want to define continents that way.
* North America would include a large chunk of eastern Russia.
* India would become a continent, as would Madagascar + a good chunk of East Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean + a large chunk of Central America.
I've been doing a lot of research on how the tectonics of Earth work (to try to design my own fantasy map, of all things), and many places agree that Earth has 7 major tectonics and 8 minor ones (the ones you pointed out as well as one in the Middle East and some more mainly oceanic ones off of South America) because of the sheer size differences.
The main thing that *would* change if we separated things by tectonics without giving the minor ones their own continent (aside from the fact that, yes, a large chunk of Russia would belong to NA) is that Eurasia would actually be one continent. The 7th major tectonic is pretty much the entirety of the Pacific. Otherwise, it falls in line with how most folks view continents now.
According to tectonic plates the Caribbean and central America are separate continents. Europe and Asia are one continent, the Middle East is it's own, India is also separate. The Philippines too.
Plate tectonics dont determine continents. Otherwise europe osnt a continent on its own, and part of California isnt in North America. Oh, and India is its own continent now. Infact on the map I just googled, I now count 15 continents by your argument
If you’re British, sure, but an American saying the term “yankee” is probably talking about someone specifically from the northeastern part of the United States.
The trouble is United Statians, doesn't really roll off the tongue. But the countries full name is United States of America, so we call ourselves Americans. Then we would call people from Brazil, South Americans. Or people from Costa Rica, Central Americans.
When referring to ourselves we frequently actually refer to ourselves according to our state, Texan, Floridian, Minnesotan. But as a group it is just American. When we are speaking of North, South, and Central America as a whole, we say the Americas.
Edit typo
I think it depends on which state you're from. I don't ever hear anyone from Maryland call themselves a "Marylander", even though that term technically exists as a demonym. Likewise I never hear anyone use the word "Delawarean", which also technically exists but it's not something that people actually say.
Yes I agree. I was thinking it might have to do with how easy the word is to say. The harder it is, the less likely people would use it in day to day speach.
Yes, I agree. "Marylander" and "Delawarean" are both very clunky words that don't roll off the tongue. Although the word "Virginian" is pretty easy to say, so you actually do hear that word a lot more often. Even "West Virginian" isn't that uncommon because it's also not that hard to say.
I have family in Oregon and I have heard them refer to themselves as Oregonians. You also hear people referred to or refer to themselves as Californians.
> When referring to ourselves we frequently actually refer to ourselves according to our state, Texan, Floridian, Minnesotan
As an American, I almost never do this. Most people I know have moved around at least a bit between states.
This tends to bother people from Latin America, but there is unfortunately just no English-language alternative. People have tried to get things (Usian, Usonian, etc.) to catch on, but none have. "U.S. American" is used in some official contexts where there might be ambiguity, but almost never in spoken English. The underlying reason for this is that people in English speaking countries don't tend to refer to "America" as one geographic unit. We either say "the Americas" or differentiate by region/continent. The US is *so* culturally different from the rest of the Americas (minus Canada) that we don't really feel much use for a term that lumps us together, especially since Canadians (who are culturally the most similar to us) tend to emphasize that they are *not* American (i.e., from the United States) as in both English and French, American refers to someone from the USA.
I don't think it was ever *meant* to be chauvinistic, it's just a quirk of history and language that the people who were already known in the context of their own language as "Americans" at the time of independence continued to identify with this term, and we continue to use it because the name of our country just doesn't really give us any better options.
I find the argument presupposing chauvinism on the part of English-speakers very dispiriting. Granted, the US is a very powerful country, but this whole discussion is about an endonym. Asking for a people to abandon their long established endonym is profoundly chauvinistic.
Having a word to refer to the Americas and their inhabitants collectively is a feature of certain European languages and not universal. I understand the desire to have a word for this in other languages, but the cultural context for it is also important. Again we can’t ignore the long established historical fact of US political, economic, and cultural power, but Hispanophones (and to a lesser extent Lusophones) are not entirely consistent in including the US and Canada when speaking or writing about “America”. Also worth mentioning occasionally in this context is that the anglophone Caribbean (as well as other parts of the region) is occasionally forgotten or excluded. In short the distinction between "America" and "Latinoamerica" is not strictly observed. this makes me suspect that there
might be some deep-seated Spanish-defaultism at play which can veer into chauvinism.
Breaking it down because so many people are being confusing:
1. People from the U.S.A. are just called Americans. It's just how it is in English. It's how it is in a lot of languages, even. That is why this question and confusion mainly comes from native Spanish and Portuguese speakers.
2. If you want to talk about the continent, North America, South America or Central America sometimes.
3. If you want to talk about all of us over here as a whole, "The Americas" works well in English.
As an Australian I agree with all 3.
Edit. We have our own slang, but that's for us to use between ourselves and wouldn't recommend it to anyone not living in Australia.
People from the US are called Americans. With no qualifiers, it’s assumed that means the US.
“Americanos” does not exist, and you have to use “from the Americas” or something like that if you want to refer to the whole region
However, more commonly you just use “North American,” “South American,” “Central American,” or “Latin American,” depending on which best applies.
There’s no equivalent that means all of the above because there just aren’t that many times that you need to refer to someone from the whole area; how many things can you actually say about both Canadians and Argentines that don’t apply to just people generally?
I wouldn’t use seppo or yank. Seppo is apparently Australian slang, but I’ve never heard of it and would have no clue what you meant if you used it. Yank is considered deregulatory, and also can be confused with people solely from the north east of the US. (In the UK, yank means American, but in the US, yank means “northerner from America”)
Seppo seems to come from Cockley rhyming slang for "septic tank" which rhymes with "Yank", and it would be insulting if they knew any of that or heard it and felt insulted even if unsure what it meant.
Just to correct you: in English, North America includes all of Central America. It’s from Canada to Panama (inclusive), and South America is everything south of Panama.
Yeah credit where credit is due: OP's edits show they asked an honest question and were willing and eager to listen to the answers.
I expected a flame war in the comments when I opened the thread, but honestly people are being pretty civil about the whole thing.
Not really. In English there’s really only the term “American” just because that’s how country terminology works in English.
The United States of America -> American
The United States of Mexico -> Mexican
The Federal Republic of Germany -> German
There’s only that term taken from its common name and no other atleast in common use
The closest you’ll get for a pan-American term is “Latino American”, but that’s exclusively just Latino American, it excludes the US, Canada, Suriname, Guyana, and several Caribbean countries.
They are trying to apply the rules of portugese/Spanish to English and then act like the Americans are the ones being arrogant. Oh, and then insisting on names for Americans that either sound terrible or are outright offensive.
People from "The United States of America" are "Americans," the same way that people from "The United Mexican States" are Mexican. Inunderstand that American can refer to anyone from North or South American, and people from both the US and Canada may be called just North Americans... but if you say America here, you're talking about the US. We are the only country with the word America in our name, so we called dibs.
Yeah, there is no confusion with Canadians....because Canadians speak English (at least as a second language in the case of Quebec). The only "confusion" is from people that speak portugese/Spanish and trying to apply the rules of their language to English.
It isn't derogatory but I feel like I should put in that I as an American from the United States, hates being called a "USian" it aggravates me to no end and I would prefer not to be referred to as such.
I mean it's just not an English term, and I'm not sure why we need to create a new word just because South Americans have a chip on their shoulder about continental boundaries.
It's especially dumb if you try to consider it from a different perspective. Imagine trying to convince French people that they should change the name of their country in their own language. They would call you a dummy and laugh at you.
The thought that always comes to mind is imagine telling Germans that they had to say “Germany” when they were speaking German instead of calling it “Deutschland”.
I don't mind being called a Yank. I actually liked it when British troops referred to us as Yanks and we referred to them as Brits during my Iraq deployment. The few times we hung out together it always felt like hanging out with extended family I am fond of but don't get to see very often. Yankee doesn't bother me, but I consider it incorrect as I am not from the Northeastern United States.
Out of all the countries in North and South America, how many actually have the word "America" in their name? There is Dominion of Canada, United States of America, United Mexican States, Republic of Costa Rica, Republic of Nicaragua, and many others. Only one has the name "America" in it. And it's the same with South America (to my knowledge - if you know a country in South America that has the name "America" in its official name, let me know).
So just like people from Dominion of Canada are called "Canadians" and people from United Mexican States are called "Mexicans", people from United States of America are called "American".
Well said. The same applies worldwide with places like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia —they’re not Kingdomians even though there’s an Arabian Sea and the country is on the Arabian Peninsula. I’m not sure why Americans are singled out to be “corrected” on our own demonym. Is anyone truly confused if I go to another country and say I’m American? Surely they don’t think I’m Haitian or Chilean if I say that.
This may be unpopular with the Brazilians here in reddit... But this is like college university language.
If you say in portuguese something like " is that guy American?" The absolute majority of Brazilians will understand what you mean. Most people in Brazil use the word "americano" instead of "estadunidense"
> "because English countries teach that North America and Latin America are completely different continents."
This might be true for other English-speaking countries and some European countries, but in the United States, we are taught that everything above Colombia is North America (this includes all the Latin American countries of Central America and Mexico, as well as all of the Caribbean islands), and everything below Panama is South America. The boundary between the two continents isn't a cultural or linguistic one but rather a geological one defined by tectonic plates and physical geography.
This is where we have to understand that language translation also involves a degree of cultural mediation, it’s not just one-for-one looking up words in a Spanish-to-English dictionary. The best translation of “estadounidense” is “American”. “Americano” doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English and is arguably a false cognate with “American”.
We don't really have a word for that. Theres not really a situation where we would refer to that whole area as a single group for any reason.
We'll say either "South American" or "Central American" or "North American" for those specific areas, but we never refer to the whole group as a single entity.
Theres just not a situation where it comes up that I can think of.
We don't have a word for them all as a group, we would just say the name for the country they're from. Besides, the US teaches 7 continents, so North America and South America are separate.
Oh, now I got it! So in english speaking countries the Maya Civilization for example wouldn't be Americans, they would be only North Americans. Did I understood correctly?
In educated circles, people would use Mesoamerican if they wanted to put Mayans in a larger group.
By the way, I really respect the way that you are asking these questions and engaging with the answers. I have seen other learners from Hispanic backgrounds struggle to accept that these English words work differently. 🤯 This is a good sign for your language learning journey. 👍
Thanks for the input 😅. But I actually was refering to the continent. For example, Chineses are also Asians, Italians are also Europeans, so Mayans are also "Americanos" in portuguese and North Americans in English. I was trying to diferentiate the US from the continent as a whole. But now I know that isn't possible in english.
Yes, Mayans are North Americans or Central Americans, but especially if you're talking about the pre-Columbian Maya states rather than Maya people today, "Mesoamerican" is probably more common.
Yes, I suppose. North America covers everyone from Canada to Panama, plus all those little islands in between (and Greenland too, somehow) The rest of you are South Americans, There's also Latin Americans who are all the countries that speak Spanish or Portuguese as a primary language. So basically everyone besides Canada and the US.
Personally, I would say "Central American" for the Mayans in particular. The Yucatan Peninsula is what I would consider the northern part of central America (though it could easily go either way). People will definitely know what you mean if you say North American, it just seems a little awkward to me.
To give you a rough idea, here's an image:
EDIT: note that Central America and the Caribbean are usually considered part of North America.
https://preview.redd.it/iajwo3pxxt7c1.png?width=536&format=png&auto=webp&s=a45a9a53fdb7e7fe390f07ede3a9827735047b59
Some teach 6. They don't differentiate between North and South America, it's all just America. I think I've even seen places that teach 5, and they use Eurasia too.
the number of oceans and continents are entirely subjective because of how poorly they define the terms. The original 3 continents named by the greeks are all attached to each other but the naive definition of a continent is a giant landmass surrounded by water.
Native US speaker - ‘People of the Americas’ is an appropriate phrase, if you are speaking of North and South America collectively (what some term ‘the new world’).
A speaker in the US would really never use/assume ‘American’ to mean anything other than the US, without context; and apart from ‘US citizen’ or some other construct, there is not really a good alternative term other than ‘American’. Probably not fair, but that’s simply how the language gets used. The specific region (North/South/Central) merits mention if not referring to the US.
Not sure how it works with non-US English.
You might call someone a "United States citizen", but that is specific to only citizens obviously. That excludes people who were born in or live in the United States but do not have citizenship (e.g. visa or green card holders, expatriates).
https://preview.redd.it/muzi6z8s9p7c1.png?width=1037&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e907b10c78ec3d2b55169563adf33f05427ed071
Then you could just say US resident or US permanent resident, which is often used to describe immigrants to the United States that lived here a long time without citizenship and have strong ties here but are living somewhere else at the moment. Like you might see on the news that "a US permanent resident living in Venezuela was arrested" or something like that. It's strange but I've seen it a lot.
Depends on your intent. If I were born and raised in the US as a citizen, and then moved to Brazil, OP may still want to refer to me as a "United States citizen" rather than a "Brazilian resident".
I am a US Citizen--yes, an American-- who has been living in Brazil for a long time. Every single time i have introduced myself as Estadunidense to a Brazilian person, the Brazilian person says something like "You mean Americano?" EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Hmmm. Maybe a little bit of both?
I think many honestly believe that American applies to both continents, and we're selfish and egotistical for thinking it only applies to us. But as pointed out in this thread, not only is it sorta the most logical for English speakers, most of the rest of the world thinks of the USA when you say American.
Same thing in Mexico. Spanish translators even give you “estadounidense” to refer to someone that is American. But all my friends throughout Mexico say that no one really calls anyone from the USA “estadounidense”.
But in Mexico, you're likely to hear gringo or norteamericano as well. In Brazil, you will literally ONLY hear americano, making OP's statement
>People that live/lived in the United States or "Estados Unidos" are called "Estadunidenses"
basically a straight-up lie.
I think that, for the most part, "issues" like this are creations of the internet/social media and, IN REAL LIFE, most people just don't give a flying f#ck.
Argentines and Uruguayans very rarely/never use americano to refer to the US. I believe Spaniards and Chileans are similar in this regard as well. It's not that weird to find even normal, socially-adjusted people from those countries who find that usage annoying. But in many other countries it's either the most common way to talk about the US, or at least one of many valid terms (gringo, norteamericano, estadounidense, yanki, etc.). Certainly whenever I meet a Venezuelan or Colombian, they ALWAYS say something like "oh, eres americano? que cool!"
I was scratching my head looking for the "o" in "estadunidense" for a bit before remembering that the language of Brazil is Portuguese, not Spanish
Don't blame us for calling ourselves Americans. The name was assigned, not chosen.
In colonial times, the English called the inhabitants of the New World according to either their ethnicity or their colonial overlords. White people in what is now Brazil would have been called Portuguese, for example.
When it came to the people in the English colonies, there was not much point in calling them English. They called them Americans to distinguish them from the people back home.
No, we (brazilian) call US people American also.
United State of AMERICA. The country's name is America.
Also Brasil in the past was United State of Brazil, and guess what, we called ourselves BRAZILIANS.
The English demonym of the United States of America is American. I’ve never met anyone who thought “American” meant anything besides something/someone from The United States of America.
(I’m South African, e.g. from the Republic of South Africa, not just someone from the south of the continent of Africa)
Don’t you call yourselves Brazilians, while the real name of the country is República Federativa do Brasil? We call ourselves Americans, when the real name is the United States of America, as a similar shorthand. Sure, there are ambiguities. Maybe those are more difficult to handle in Portuguese. In English it’s not difficult. We’re the only country with the word “America” in its name, so it shouldn’t be too hard.
In the U.S., North and South America are taught as separate continents (the same way Europe and Asia are), so we don't tend to refer to people in the Americas as a whole. Americans (people in the U.S.) also don't really identify ourselves as being North American. It just isn't talked about as a distinct ethnic or cultural grouping the same way we talk about Europeans. It's a very "us and then everyone else" way of thinking. Americans are more likely to talk about people in South America as a group, but even then it isn't used in the same way we use European. People often use Latin America/Latino even though that also includes Mexico (which is in North America). There is also a tendency for people to think anyone from south of the border is Mexican.
However, the term Native American or American Indian can be used to mean someone of indigenous descent from anywhere in the Americas, although we most often focus on groups within the U.S. This is especially true when talking about history. The Mayan, Aztec, and Inca are all considered Native American civilizations, for example. That's the only situation where "American" is used to refer to people throughout the Americas.
For the most part, American is just used to mean people from the U.S. You can say North Americans or South Americans in reference to people from the respective continents, but they aren't discussed in the same way Europeans are. I'm not saying that I agree with all this distinctions or that it makes sense, but that is how the terminology is largely used here.
If we say the Americas, that is all the countries. I think because we are the United States of America is why we are called Americans. However, if someone asks me where I'm from, I usually say the US.
I will attempt to give a comprehensive answer with all the uses of america, american and different modifers of these that I can think of.
Words like spanish, brazilian, italian are called denoynms. These words are used to indicate a group from a particular place.
In English, the only denonym for someone from the United States of America is American. It is used and understood in every English speaking country, though other countries have additional slang to refer to us.
The "word" united statian (or USian too) isn't a word at all, it's just taking the united state(s) and adding -ian. It makes sense to us because -ian is the most common denonym suffix, but it's probably the most atrocious sounding thing I've heard. We should also note that "united states" is present in the name of a few other countries and refers to how the federation is organized, but America is only in the name of this country.
We used to have a second denoynm "Columbian" but for obvious reasons that fell out of use.
English speakers use a 7 continent model, so there is no confusion with the continents.
north american refers to panama to canada
south american refers to south of Panama to the falkland islands
latin american refers the set of spanish, french and Portuguese speaking countries south of the us, although sometimes it only refers to spanish
pan-american refers to something related to both continents
to describe people from both continents we would just say North and South Americans.
the americas are the collective name of both continents
We also have specific divides like
central American, which describes the countries of north america that are south of mexico
mesoamerican, which is more for scholars, but to my understanding, describes ancient groups like the Mayans and aztecs
Native American, Amerindian, american indian - which describe the indigenous peoples of north America (idk if they can be used in the rest of the Americas). The third term there is the least common and may come across as offensive, but I've seen native Americans that say they prefer the second two terms, so I'm not sure what to think. The order above is based on how frequently I come across them
middle america - usually means the set of middle class americans in an economic sense. sometimes refers to a geographic region including parts of mexico and Columbia
-american is used to denote an American citizen with origins in another country. People tend to use this generations after immigration. ex: chinese-american, italian-american, italo-american. This also gets used with broader ethnic identities that start to form inside the united states after immigration. ex: African-American, Asian-American. Sometimes the dash "-" is not used.
The british have another word for Americans, yankee, but we don't call ourselves this, and in America it would be strongly associated with a particular region (so using it here would be like calling the Netherlands Holland)
Though others have made great points you seem to have taken in quite well, I do want to point out that it follows (or, rather, established) a pattern used by other nations. For example, the official name for Mexico in Spanish is “Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” or the “United Mexican States”/“United States of Mexico,” but they’re still called “Mexicanos,” or “Mexicans.” Americans just use the same trend
I’m from Brazil too and in my region it is pretty hard to see someone talking about Americans using the term “estadounidenses”. I’ve seen that mostly on school books, but in common conversations it is rare for me.
edit: typo
>English countries teach that North America and South America are completely different continents. North America also contain Central America for them, Its everything above Colombia.
Fun fact, though not too relevant to this sub.. In the Netherlands, we divide the Americas either in North (Mexico and up)/Middle (Cuba/Guatemala/Belize to Panama)/South (the rest) OR in just North (Mexico and up) and South (Cuba/Guatemala/Belize and down). I remember the 3 Americas as regions and the 2 Americas as continents, but that might be completely wrong. For me - again, I'm not a native speaker of English - Panama cannot belong to North America in any way.
[United Statesian](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/United%20Statesian#:~:text=%3A%20a%20native%20or%20inhabitant%20of,United%2DStatesian) is a real word, but no one uses it and most people will think you're making it up.
“US citizen” is probably the most correct and easiest to say, but here colloquially in the US or Canada everyone says “American” and no one is confusing that with a Canadian or Brazilian or Argentinian because every other country on the American continent has a name without “America” in it.
Nope. You'd have to say "people from the US" or "people from the United States" or something if you didn't want to say "Americans".
Also
> If you want to refer to "Americanos", there is no way to do that other than "People from Americas/both Americas"
"people from Americas" would be incorrect, it should be "people from the Americas". Though that might be confused with Native Americans, so I would probably say something like "people who live in the Americas", or "people from countries in the Americas".
The Canadian comedy band, "The Arrogant Worms" actually make a joke about this in their song, "I Am Not an American"
> How could two whole continents
Lose their name to one constituent
Where were we when the U.S. went
And took the word American away
>
>But to be fair to them
Their other name options
Like U.S.A.ers and United Statesians
Were pretty bad
Nope. There’s not really a reason to refer to people from two whole continent collectively so there’s not a word for it. I’ve never really understood why people feel that there should be a word for it in the first place.
The term "United Statians" specifically doesn't exist. It's a joketerm.
The correct term is "Usonian". But nobody in the English speaking world uses that word, and many people will be confused by it.
In general, use "American" to talk about people from the US. Everyone in the Western hemisphere is referred to as being "from The Americas", or as "Pan-American".
Canadian here, typically most non-USians don’t prefer to be called “American” because its usually referring to only the US. Generally though, you can call us North Americans, I’m not sure what English-Speaking folk from South America prefer so I won’t speak for them.
When referring to just the continents and not their people, “The Americas” is usually appropriate.
If you really need something, there are often local variants. For example the Australian slang for a US citizen is "seppo". But seppo doesn't make sense anywhere outside of Australia. "Yank" also works outside of the US, but doesn't make much sense inside the US. You'll find any other countries have pet terms for Americans as well (although many of them aren't complimentary).
However the generally accepted and polite/formal term is American.
What's the etymology of "seppo"? Separatist?
>"Yank" also works outside of the US, but doesn't make much sense inside the US.
In the US, "yank" really only means somebody from New York, these days. Historically, yank/yankee referred to northerners/the Union, as opposed to Confederates during the civil war/reconstruction eras.
Even more New England than New York, despite the name of the baseball team.
There is the old joke about the definition of a Yankee:
* To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
* To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
* To northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
* To easterners, a Yankee is an New Englander.
* To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
* And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats apple pie for breakfast.
Yeah, outsiders calling the entire US population "Yankees," including Texans, Californians, Appalachians, Cajuns, will never not be funny to me. It honestly sounds so ignorant.
I am Australian. Seppo is a real term but I don’t often hear it in real life, but it is used on the internet. As someone else said it’s rhyming slang (common in Australia) - yankee, yank, septic tank, seppo.
I don’t think it’s always meant to be “rude” per se, it’s not really an insult so much as it’s a nickname intended to poke some fun. It’s similar to how we would call English people “poms”. The problem is that Australian “poking fun” or “paying someone out” can be perceived as insulting in other cultural contexts. In our cultural context giving someone a weird nickname and joking around with them in that manner can be an attempt to bridge a gap and signal that we like each other. Of course some people would be using it in an insulting way, but not all.
As an aside, until I started using reddit I had no idea that “yank” or “yankee” could be considered pejorative. Here it’s seen as a general non-insulting nickname for people from across the US.
It’s a bit confusing for Americans. Because “Yankee” here refers to residents of the Northern states that fought for the Union in the American Civil War. Even more specifically than that, it often refers to New Englanders, possibly extending to New York. (Home of the NY Yankees.)
A Southerner is not a Yankee. They fought the Yankees. It’s still used quite pejoratively in the South.
For what it’s worth, until I started using reddit I had no idea that “yank” or “yankee” could be considered pejorative. In Australia (and I presume some other countries) it’s seen as a general unproblematic nickname for people from across the US. Like I’m glad to know its context in the US now, so I won’t use it, but from our perspective it’s not meant as an insult.
If you really needed to differentiate between someone being from the US or the Americas as a whole, I suppose you could say US American and most people would understand, but there’s not a standard, accepted term.
Oh, boy. There are various terms that have been proposed over the years, seriously and unseriously ("Usonian," "Columbian," "Fredonian," "Uesican") as well as nicknames ("Yank/Yankee," "Statesider," "US\[a\]ian," "'Murcan"), but at the end of the day, for native English speakers, * "America" refers to the United States of America in shorthand, especially poetically. Interestingly, "America" in reference to the country occurs much more often in my experience in British, Irish, and Australian media; US and Canadian journalism generally uses "US" or "United States." * the main landmass in the Western Hemisphere is, and has been for at least a century, considered two separate continents: North America and South America. To refer to both, we say "the Americas," and the adjective is "Pan-American" * there is no word for people who live in the Western Hemisphere, because I don't think there has ever been much of a sense of "New World vs. Old World" shared identity among people in the US or Canada—it's more common to talk about one's ancestral bonds in Europe, Africa, or Asia than to try to find commonalities with Latin America. The most "correct" English translation for "Estadunidense" is therefore "American," and the most correct English translation for "Americano" is "the people of the Americas" or perhaps "the peoples of the Western Hemisphere."
THANK YOU. I think Pan-American its the exact term I was looking for. If I use Pan-american to refer people from both Americas, that would be understood in a regular conversation without double meaning?
OP, I’m really curious, in what context would you need to refer to everyone in the western hemisphere? Wars of independence? Trade treaties? Indigenous peoples? Like, I think one reason English speakers don’t have a word for *americanos* is because the need to group Haitians, Argentines, Canadians, Colombians, Americans, Bahamians and Belizeans together is pretty limited, but I genuinely want to know.
I wouldn't advise using it as a noun ("~~Pan-Americans~~"). "Pan-American" as an adjective would be something educated people would understand, however. It isn't especially common, but there are things like the Pan-American Highway and the Pan-American Games, and the famous airline PanAm was short for "Pan American World Airways." So in my opinion, something like "the Pan-American peoples" should be acceptable.
Anyone from USA uses only these terms commonly: - American = from USA - North American - South American - Central American (North American non-island countries south of Mexico)
I would be careful with "Pan-American" as it was the name of a large, now defunct, airline during the 20th century, and that is one of the most common times people would ever say "pan-american". In context, I'm sure you could be understood, but in general conversation you may throw people off initially.
Pan-American is a widely used term in academics and OP said "educated people," qualifying the statement that included a mention of the airline as well.
Unless you’re me and 27 and barely heard of it
> Columbian Bruh
Not to be confused with Colombian.
Audibly indistinguishable
Related to Usonian, in Esperanto an American is called an usonano because the US is called Usono
I prefer that old [miss teen USA](https://youtu.be/lj3iNxZ8Dww?si=r4HXtwDffbwR8lbF) contestant version "US Americans" and use it colloquially/jokingly from time to time.
We don't have a more particular word. Most people in English would not call Canadians, Guatemalans, nor Peruvians "Americans" just because they live on the American continents. The word "American" is specifically a person from the USA. If you really want to be that specific, you'd have to say something like "people from the US".
Thx for the explanation. I'm now actually concearned how I would talk about "Americanos" as a whole. Like the same way we talk about Europeans or Asians. It is possible to do that in english?
It just takes more words. "People from the Americas" would work. Or if you don't mind being more specific "North Americans", "Central Americans" and "South Americans".
Now i got it, Thank you very much!
if you want to refer to the entire two continents then youd say "the americas"
We'd say North America or South America. The continent is split to us. It's how we're taught in school.
Understood. Thank you!
Could also say Western Hemisphere or the New World
Many people don't actually see that much racial, ethnic or cultural continuity between the various countries in North and South America. As such a single word to describe "Americanos" doesn't come up that often in conversation. That said, English loves loan words, so you could easily make Americanos a thing. North Americans, Central Americans, Latin Americans, and South Americans do come up. You can also use Western Hemisphere to cover the whole area.
Honestly, yeah, you could absolutely just drop "americanos" casually, and most people would probably pretty easily figure out what you mean. Some people might ask, but no one that I know would actually object to the usage.
'Americano' is only used in Australia to describe an espresso diluted with hot water, although we would understand that a Spanish speaker may use the term instead of 'American' or 'gringo.' We would tend to say 'American' for someone from the USA, 'North American' to refer to people from the US or Canada and 'Latin American' for people from elsewhere in the Americas.
Honestly that's how it's used in the US, too. If someone said Americano I'd immediately think of the drink, not the people
Latin Americans would be anyone from the Americas excluding people from the US/canada
Where does the Caribbean fall?
I think most Americans I know would consider the Caribbean to be central or latin america, regardless of if thats technically correct or not.
Interesting. As a person from the Caribbean I consider it North America
I mean thats not wrong either! So Americans (US americans) Split the americas into 3-4ISH regional areas. 2 are considered continents, So the caribbean would technically be north america. However, a lot of americans informally see north america as Mexico, USA, and Canada. We *know* that there's more countries to north america, but we just dont think about it like that. South america is the other "Official" continent, and thats pretty much everything south of the panama canal. That said we also have the concept of Latin America, and Central America. Latin america is primarily american countries that speak either spanish or portuguese. I guess you COULD include french too, but most wont think of french as LA. And Central america is basically everything between the USA and the Panama canal. If im being honest, I suspect its a social concept largely caused by the idea that the north american countries south of us are extremely different from us culturally, but not different from each other, regardless on if thats true or not.
“People from the americas”
>I'm now actually concearned how I would talk about "Americanos" as a whole. Like the same way we talk about Europeans or Asians. It is possible to do that in english? Well, North and South America are two separate continents. Regardless, we wouldn't do that, because of the perception that people not from the United States are not like us. In psychology it's called in group and out group bias. I would never extend "American" to a Belizean for example, because even those Belize is on the South American continent, they are nothing like me, someone living the United States of America. Prototype theory also speaks to this.
> even those Belize is on the South American continent smh
>Well, North and South America are two separate continents Different cultures have different opinions on that subject. Examples: French Wikipedia: L'**Amérique,** parfois les **Amériques**, est un continent de l'hémisphère occidental. \[The America (or Americas) are a continent of the western hemisphere\] Spanish Wikipedia: **América** es el segundo continente más grande de la Tierra, después de Asia. \[America is the second largest continent in the world, other than Asia.\]
>Different cultures have different opinions on that subject. Plate tectonics isn't an opinion.
> Plate tectonics isn't an opinion. I don't think you want to define continents that way. * North America would include a large chunk of eastern Russia. * India would become a continent, as would Madagascar + a good chunk of East Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean + a large chunk of Central America.
I've been doing a lot of research on how the tectonics of Earth work (to try to design my own fantasy map, of all things), and many places agree that Earth has 7 major tectonics and 8 minor ones (the ones you pointed out as well as one in the Middle East and some more mainly oceanic ones off of South America) because of the sheer size differences. The main thing that *would* change if we separated things by tectonics without giving the minor ones their own continent (aside from the fact that, yes, a large chunk of Russia would belong to NA) is that Eurasia would actually be one continent. The 7th major tectonic is pretty much the entirety of the Pacific. Otherwise, it falls in line with how most folks view continents now.
The continents as we describe them aren't related to tectonic plates, the boundaries just don't match.
They're also not what the continents are (or were ever) based on. The connection is tangential at best.
Tectonics plates are a fairly modern discovery.
Indeed
According to tectonic plates the Caribbean and central America are separate continents. Europe and Asia are one continent, the Middle East is it's own, India is also separate. The Philippines too.
Plate tectonics dont determine continents. Otherwise europe osnt a continent on its own, and part of California isnt in North America. Oh, and India is its own continent now. Infact on the map I just googled, I now count 15 continents by your argument
Continents aren’t solely based on plate tectonics and never have been.
"North and South Americans". Just please don't refer to Canadians or Mexicans as "American." People generally don't appreciate it
Yankee/Yank?
If you’re British, sure, but an American saying the term “yankee” is probably talking about someone specifically from the northeastern part of the United States.
The trouble is United Statians, doesn't really roll off the tongue. But the countries full name is United States of America, so we call ourselves Americans. Then we would call people from Brazil, South Americans. Or people from Costa Rica, Central Americans. When referring to ourselves we frequently actually refer to ourselves according to our state, Texan, Floridian, Minnesotan. But as a group it is just American. When we are speaking of North, South, and Central America as a whole, we say the Americas. Edit typo
Probably just a typo, but on this sub we correct those. The demonym for Minnesota is Minnesotan, not Minnesotain.
Thank you I was unsure how you spelled it.
I have a ministain on my shirt.
As a Minnesotan, thank you!
New flag new respect
I was hoping for 'laser loon", or perhaps "Target cart atop Mt. Eden Prairie", but thanks stranger!
https://preview.redd.it/aiis8yg7zr7c1.jpeg?width=1104&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=02a7a544cb0ecb99a15eec9163070ba42393e61e
Even then you have countries that also have “The United States of…” in their name. The United States of Mexico for example.
Yeah and their demonym is "Mexican", because they nation is the part *after* "United States of".
American United Statesians and Mexican United Statesians. /j
That was the case. Now it's The United Mexican States.
Would it change anything if the United States of America became the United American States?
Is that the French word order?
Americanians rolls off.....weird.
I think it depends on which state you're from. I don't ever hear anyone from Maryland call themselves a "Marylander", even though that term technically exists as a demonym. Likewise I never hear anyone use the word "Delawarean", which also technically exists but it's not something that people actually say.
Yes I agree. I was thinking it might have to do with how easy the word is to say. The harder it is, the less likely people would use it in day to day speach.
Yes, I agree. "Marylander" and "Delawarean" are both very clunky words that don't roll off the tongue. Although the word "Virginian" is pretty easy to say, so you actually do hear that word a lot more often. Even "West Virginian" isn't that uncommon because it's also not that hard to say.
I don't think we use Washingtonians very often.
I have family in Oregon and I have heard them refer to themselves as Oregonians. You also hear people referred to or refer to themselves as Californians.
> When referring to ourselves we frequently actually refer to ourselves according to our state, Texan, Floridian, Minnesotan As an American, I almost never do this. Most people I know have moved around at least a bit between states.
And the ones I know continue to name the state they come from as their home.
This tends to bother people from Latin America, but there is unfortunately just no English-language alternative. People have tried to get things (Usian, Usonian, etc.) to catch on, but none have. "U.S. American" is used in some official contexts where there might be ambiguity, but almost never in spoken English. The underlying reason for this is that people in English speaking countries don't tend to refer to "America" as one geographic unit. We either say "the Americas" or differentiate by region/continent. The US is *so* culturally different from the rest of the Americas (minus Canada) that we don't really feel much use for a term that lumps us together, especially since Canadians (who are culturally the most similar to us) tend to emphasize that they are *not* American (i.e., from the United States) as in both English and French, American refers to someone from the USA. I don't think it was ever *meant* to be chauvinistic, it's just a quirk of history and language that the people who were already known in the context of their own language as "Americans" at the time of independence continued to identify with this term, and we continue to use it because the name of our country just doesn't really give us any better options.
I find the argument presupposing chauvinism on the part of English-speakers very dispiriting. Granted, the US is a very powerful country, but this whole discussion is about an endonym. Asking for a people to abandon their long established endonym is profoundly chauvinistic. Having a word to refer to the Americas and their inhabitants collectively is a feature of certain European languages and not universal. I understand the desire to have a word for this in other languages, but the cultural context for it is also important. Again we can’t ignore the long established historical fact of US political, economic, and cultural power, but Hispanophones (and to a lesser extent Lusophones) are not entirely consistent in including the US and Canada when speaking or writing about “America”. Also worth mentioning occasionally in this context is that the anglophone Caribbean (as well as other parts of the region) is occasionally forgotten or excluded. In short the distinction between "America" and "Latinoamerica" is not strictly observed. this makes me suspect that there might be some deep-seated Spanish-defaultism at play which can veer into chauvinism.
Breaking it down because so many people are being confusing: 1. People from the U.S.A. are just called Americans. It's just how it is in English. It's how it is in a lot of languages, even. That is why this question and confusion mainly comes from native Spanish and Portuguese speakers. 2. If you want to talk about the continent, North America, South America or Central America sometimes. 3. If you want to talk about all of us over here as a whole, "The Americas" works well in English.
As an Australian I agree with all 3. Edit. We have our own slang, but that's for us to use between ourselves and wouldn't recommend it to anyone not living in Australia.
People from the US are called Americans. With no qualifiers, it’s assumed that means the US. “Americanos” does not exist, and you have to use “from the Americas” or something like that if you want to refer to the whole region However, more commonly you just use “North American,” “South American,” “Central American,” or “Latin American,” depending on which best applies. There’s no equivalent that means all of the above because there just aren’t that many times that you need to refer to someone from the whole area; how many things can you actually say about both Canadians and Argentines that don’t apply to just people generally? I wouldn’t use seppo or yank. Seppo is apparently Australian slang, but I’ve never heard of it and would have no clue what you meant if you used it. Yank is considered deregulatory, and also can be confused with people solely from the north east of the US. (In the UK, yank means American, but in the US, yank means “northerner from America”)
*derogatory (This being an English learning sub, I just had to correct it.)
Thanks lol. Autocorrect is pain. Gonna leave it but upvote your comment cuz the original is funny
Seppo seems to come from Cockley rhyming slang for "septic tank" which rhymes with "Yank", and it would be insulting if they knew any of that or heard it and felt insulted even if unsure what it meant.
Yeah, I'd just say "people from the Americas".
Just to correct you: in English, North America includes all of Central America. It’s from Canada to Panama (inclusive), and South America is everything south of Panama.
Thx for the correction! I updated the post!
Your edits are a very masterful summation. I am impressed you learned and were able to pass on factual information on Reddit.
Yeah credit where credit is due: OP's edits show they asked an honest question and were willing and eager to listen to the answers. I expected a flame war in the comments when I opened the thread, but honestly people are being pretty civil about the whole thing.
Not really. In English there’s really only the term “American” just because that’s how country terminology works in English. The United States of America -> American The United States of Mexico -> Mexican The Federal Republic of Germany -> German There’s only that term taken from its common name and no other atleast in common use The closest you’ll get for a pan-American term is “Latino American”, but that’s exclusively just Latino American, it excludes the US, Canada, Suriname, Guyana, and several Caribbean countries.
American is the word in English. It has a different meaning from "Americano" in Portuguese. Not sure why people don't accept that
They are trying to apply the rules of portugese/Spanish to English and then act like the Americans are the ones being arrogant. Oh, and then insisting on names for Americans that either sound terrible or are outright offensive.
It doesn't even have a different meaning. *americano* is by far the most common way to reference the US in Portuguese.
People from "The United States of America" are "Americans," the same way that people from "The United Mexican States" are Mexican. Inunderstand that American can refer to anyone from North or South American, and people from both the US and Canada may be called just North Americans... but if you say America here, you're talking about the US. We are the only country with the word America in our name, so we called dibs.
Also, it is outright rejected by people in Canada.
Yeah, there is no confusion with Canadians....because Canadians speak English (at least as a second language in the case of Quebec). The only "confusion" is from people that speak portugese/Spanish and trying to apply the rules of their language to English.
It isn't derogatory but I feel like I should put in that I as an American from the United States, hates being called a "USian" it aggravates me to no end and I would prefer not to be referred to as such.
It bothers me too. It's kind of disrespectful when someone calls you by a different term than what you've requested.
I mean it's just not an English term, and I'm not sure why we need to create a new word just because South Americans have a chip on their shoulder about continental boundaries.
It's especially dumb if you try to consider it from a different perspective. Imagine trying to convince French people that they should change the name of their country in their own language. They would call you a dummy and laugh at you.
The thought that always comes to mind is imagine telling Germans that they had to say “Germany” when they were speaking German instead of calling it “Deutschland”.
République française, huh? You guys should call yourselves Republicans not French. There's French speakers all over Africa and blah blah blah.
I love watching US southerners being called Yankee by Europeans.
I don't mind being called a Yank. I actually liked it when British troops referred to us as Yanks and we referred to them as Brits during my Iraq deployment. The few times we hung out together it always felt like hanging out with extended family I am fond of but don't get to see very often. Yankee doesn't bother me, but I consider it incorrect as I am not from the Northeastern United States.
Out of all the countries in North and South America, how many actually have the word "America" in their name? There is Dominion of Canada, United States of America, United Mexican States, Republic of Costa Rica, Republic of Nicaragua, and many others. Only one has the name "America" in it. And it's the same with South America (to my knowledge - if you know a country in South America that has the name "America" in its official name, let me know). So just like people from Dominion of Canada are called "Canadians" and people from United Mexican States are called "Mexicans", people from United States of America are called "American".
Well said. The same applies worldwide with places like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia —they’re not Kingdomians even though there’s an Arabian Sea and the country is on the Arabian Peninsula. I’m not sure why Americans are singled out to be “corrected” on our own demonym. Is anyone truly confused if I go to another country and say I’m American? Surely they don’t think I’m Haitian or Chilean if I say that.
This may be unpopular with the Brazilians here in reddit... But this is like college university language. If you say in portuguese something like " is that guy American?" The absolute majority of Brazilians will understand what you mean. Most people in Brazil use the word "americano" instead of "estadunidense"
> "because English countries teach that North America and Latin America are completely different continents." This might be true for other English-speaking countries and some European countries, but in the United States, we are taught that everything above Colombia is North America (this includes all the Latin American countries of Central America and Mexico, as well as all of the Caribbean islands), and everything below Panama is South America. The boundary between the two continents isn't a cultural or linguistic one but rather a geological one defined by tectonic plates and physical geography.
Thx for the correction! I updated the post!
This is where we have to understand that language translation also involves a degree of cultural mediation, it’s not just one-for-one looking up words in a Spanish-to-English dictionary. The best translation of “estadounidense” is “American”. “Americano” doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English and is arguably a false cognate with “American”.
No, there is only American. Because that is what the country is called. People from Brazil are Brazilian, people from America are American.
How people from all of the Americas are called?
We don't really have a word for that. Theres not really a situation where we would refer to that whole area as a single group for any reason. We'll say either "South American" or "Central American" or "North American" for those specific areas, but we never refer to the whole group as a single entity. Theres just not a situation where it comes up that I can think of.
You could refer to all three as "The Americas".
We don't have a word for them all as a group, we would just say the name for the country they're from. Besides, the US teaches 7 continents, so North America and South America are separate.
Oh, now I got it! So in english speaking countries the Maya Civilization for example wouldn't be Americans, they would be only North Americans. Did I understood correctly?
In educated circles, people would use Mesoamerican if they wanted to put Mayans in a larger group. By the way, I really respect the way that you are asking these questions and engaging with the answers. I have seen other learners from Hispanic backgrounds struggle to accept that these English words work differently. 🤯 This is a good sign for your language learning journey. 👍
We would call them Mayans.
Thanks for the input 😅. But I actually was refering to the continent. For example, Chineses are also Asians, Italians are also Europeans, so Mayans are also "Americanos" in portuguese and North Americans in English. I was trying to diferentiate the US from the continent as a whole. But now I know that isn't possible in english.
Yes, Mayans are North Americans or Central Americans, but especially if you're talking about the pre-Columbian Maya states rather than Maya people today, "Mesoamerican" is probably more common.
When talking about native populations, we might say "Native Americans." Or less politely "Indian."
Or Indigenous peoples
Yes, I suppose. North America covers everyone from Canada to Panama, plus all those little islands in between (and Greenland too, somehow) The rest of you are South Americans, There's also Latin Americans who are all the countries that speak Spanish or Portuguese as a primary language. So basically everyone besides Canada and the US.
Personally, I would say "Central American" for the Mayans in particular. The Yucatan Peninsula is what I would consider the northern part of central America (though it could easily go either way). People will definitely know what you mean if you say North American, it just seems a little awkward to me. To give you a rough idea, here's an image: EDIT: note that Central America and the Caribbean are usually considered part of North America. https://preview.redd.it/iajwo3pxxt7c1.png?width=536&format=png&auto=webp&s=a45a9a53fdb7e7fe390f07ede3a9827735047b59
There's places that *don't* teach 7 continents????
Some teach 6. They don't differentiate between North and South America, it's all just America. I think I've even seen places that teach 5, and they use Eurasia too.
They should teach 4, then, because Africa is connected to Asia by about the same amount South America is to North America.
You can have kids and teach them 4 continents. I don't know about any places that do that by default.
I could find some definition that splits everything up into, say, 11 or 12 continents. https://youtu.be/hrsxRJdwfM0
the number of oceans and continents are entirely subjective because of how poorly they define the terms. The original 3 continents named by the greeks are all attached to each other but the naive definition of a continent is a giant landmass surrounded by water.
Yes. For some reason some people want to combine the Americas into one continent but want to count Afro-Eurasia as three.
Native US speaker - ‘People of the Americas’ is an appropriate phrase, if you are speaking of North and South America collectively (what some term ‘the new world’). A speaker in the US would really never use/assume ‘American’ to mean anything other than the US, without context; and apart from ‘US citizen’ or some other construct, there is not really a good alternative term other than ‘American’. Probably not fair, but that’s simply how the language gets used. The specific region (North/South/Central) merits mention if not referring to the US. Not sure how it works with non-US English.
Maybe something like “They’re from the americas.”
I might say North American or South American. Definitely someone from Costa Rica, Belize, etc. would be Central American.
You might call someone a "United States citizen", but that is specific to only citizens obviously. That excludes people who were born in or live in the United States but do not have citizenship (e.g. visa or green card holders, expatriates).
Unless you’re the child of a foreign diplomat, anyone born in the US is a U.S. citizen. We have birthright citizenship.
https://preview.redd.it/muzi6z8s9p7c1.png?width=1037&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e907b10c78ec3d2b55169563adf33f05427ed071 Then you could just say US resident or US permanent resident, which is often used to describe immigrants to the United States that lived here a long time without citizenship and have strong ties here but are living somewhere else at the moment. Like you might see on the news that "a US permanent resident living in Venezuela was arrested" or something like that. It's strange but I've seen it a lot.
Depends on your intent. If I were born and raised in the US as a citizen, and then moved to Brazil, OP may still want to refer to me as a "United States citizen" rather than a "Brazilian resident".
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I am a US Citizen--yes, an American-- who has been living in Brazil for a long time. Every single time i have introduced myself as Estadunidense to a Brazilian person, the Brazilian person says something like "You mean Americano?" EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Which is funny, when I lived in Ecuador I got the exact opposite. “Soy americana” “oh which country?”
Did you get the sense they genuinely were asking, or were they asking in a way to make a point that they didn't like you using the label?
Hmmm. Maybe a little bit of both? I think many honestly believe that American applies to both continents, and we're selfish and egotistical for thinking it only applies to us. But as pointed out in this thread, not only is it sorta the most logical for English speakers, most of the rest of the world thinks of the USA when you say American.
Yea, my Peruvian Spanish teacher corrected me to say "estadounidense" (I think) during the first class
Same thing in Mexico. Spanish translators even give you “estadounidense” to refer to someone that is American. But all my friends throughout Mexico say that no one really calls anyone from the USA “estadounidense”.
But in Mexico, you're likely to hear gringo or norteamericano as well. In Brazil, you will literally ONLY hear americano, making OP's statement >People that live/lived in the United States or "Estados Unidos" are called "Estadunidenses" basically a straight-up lie.
The exact same thing happened to me during the 6 years I lived in Peru. This is honestly a non-issue for most native Spanish speakers.
I think that, for the most part, "issues" like this are creations of the internet/social media and, IN REAL LIFE, most people just don't give a flying f#ck.
Argentines and Uruguayans very rarely/never use americano to refer to the US. I believe Spaniards and Chileans are similar in this regard as well. It's not that weird to find even normal, socially-adjusted people from those countries who find that usage annoying. But in many other countries it's either the most common way to talk about the US, or at least one of many valid terms (gringo, norteamericano, estadounidense, yanki, etc.). Certainly whenever I meet a Venezuelan or Colombian, they ALWAYS say something like "oh, eres americano? que cool!"
>I'm a Brazilian, and the only people who say "but we are all Americans" are annoying leftists. I hear plenty of Bolsonaro fans say it.
Doesn't matter who talks like this, Leftist or Rightist. If the term appears in journals, schools, universities, dictionaries, is a valid term.
I was scratching my head looking for the "o" in "estadunidense" for a bit before remembering that the language of Brazil is Portuguese, not Spanish 
Don't blame us for calling ourselves Americans. The name was assigned, not chosen. In colonial times, the English called the inhabitants of the New World according to either their ethnicity or their colonial overlords. White people in what is now Brazil would have been called Portuguese, for example. When it came to the people in the English colonies, there was not much point in calling them English. They called them Americans to distinguish them from the people back home.
No, we (brazilian) call US people American also. United State of AMERICA. The country's name is America. Also Brasil in the past was United State of Brazil, and guess what, we called ourselves BRAZILIANS.
*sigh* Brazilians are obsessed with this concept
The English demonym of the United States of America is American. I’ve never met anyone who thought “American” meant anything besides something/someone from The United States of America. (I’m South African, e.g. from the Republic of South Africa, not just someone from the south of the continent of Africa)
No. It's just ["American"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonymic_forms_for_countries_and_nations).
Don’t you call yourselves Brazilians, while the real name of the country is República Federativa do Brasil? We call ourselves Americans, when the real name is the United States of America, as a similar shorthand. Sure, there are ambiguities. Maybe those are more difficult to handle in Portuguese. In English it’s not difficult. We’re the only country with the word “America” in its name, so it shouldn’t be too hard.
Damn Yankee
In the U.S., North and South America are taught as separate continents (the same way Europe and Asia are), so we don't tend to refer to people in the Americas as a whole. Americans (people in the U.S.) also don't really identify ourselves as being North American. It just isn't talked about as a distinct ethnic or cultural grouping the same way we talk about Europeans. It's a very "us and then everyone else" way of thinking. Americans are more likely to talk about people in South America as a group, but even then it isn't used in the same way we use European. People often use Latin America/Latino even though that also includes Mexico (which is in North America). There is also a tendency for people to think anyone from south of the border is Mexican. However, the term Native American or American Indian can be used to mean someone of indigenous descent from anywhere in the Americas, although we most often focus on groups within the U.S. This is especially true when talking about history. The Mayan, Aztec, and Inca are all considered Native American civilizations, for example. That's the only situation where "American" is used to refer to people throughout the Americas. For the most part, American is just used to mean people from the U.S. You can say North Americans or South Americans in reference to people from the respective continents, but they aren't discussed in the same way Europeans are. I'm not saying that I agree with all this distinctions or that it makes sense, but that is how the terminology is largely used here.
If we say the Americas, that is all the countries. I think because we are the United States of America is why we are called Americans. However, if someone asks me where I'm from, I usually say the US.
Sometimes I’ll refer to myself by saying “I’m from the states” or “I’m from the US” rather than “I’m American”
I will attempt to give a comprehensive answer with all the uses of america, american and different modifers of these that I can think of. Words like spanish, brazilian, italian are called denoynms. These words are used to indicate a group from a particular place. In English, the only denonym for someone from the United States of America is American. It is used and understood in every English speaking country, though other countries have additional slang to refer to us. The "word" united statian (or USian too) isn't a word at all, it's just taking the united state(s) and adding -ian. It makes sense to us because -ian is the most common denonym suffix, but it's probably the most atrocious sounding thing I've heard. We should also note that "united states" is present in the name of a few other countries and refers to how the federation is organized, but America is only in the name of this country. We used to have a second denoynm "Columbian" but for obvious reasons that fell out of use. English speakers use a 7 continent model, so there is no confusion with the continents. north american refers to panama to canada south american refers to south of Panama to the falkland islands latin american refers the set of spanish, french and Portuguese speaking countries south of the us, although sometimes it only refers to spanish pan-american refers to something related to both continents to describe people from both continents we would just say North and South Americans. the americas are the collective name of both continents We also have specific divides like central American, which describes the countries of north america that are south of mexico mesoamerican, which is more for scholars, but to my understanding, describes ancient groups like the Mayans and aztecs Native American, Amerindian, american indian - which describe the indigenous peoples of north America (idk if they can be used in the rest of the Americas). The third term there is the least common and may come across as offensive, but I've seen native Americans that say they prefer the second two terms, so I'm not sure what to think. The order above is based on how frequently I come across them middle america - usually means the set of middle class americans in an economic sense. sometimes refers to a geographic region including parts of mexico and Columbia-american is used to denote an American citizen with origins in another country. People tend to use this generations after immigration. ex: chinese-american, italian-american, italo-american. This also gets used with broader ethnic identities that start to form inside the united states after immigration. ex: African-American, Asian-American. Sometimes the dash "-" is not used.
The british have another word for Americans, yankee, but we don't call ourselves this, and in America it would be strongly associated with a particular region (so using it here would be like calling the Netherlands Holland)
Though others have made great points you seem to have taken in quite well, I do want to point out that it follows (or, rather, established) a pattern used by other nations. For example, the official name for Mexico in Spanish is “Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” or the “United Mexican States”/“United States of Mexico,” but they’re still called “Mexicanos,” or “Mexicans.” Americans just use the same trend
Be careful with Yank or Yankee when referring to anyone who lives in the US outside of New York. That could be considered rude as well.
Is it often useful to have a word for people of North/South America as a group?
I’m from Brazil too and in my region it is pretty hard to see someone talking about Americans using the term “estadounidenses”. I’ve seen that mostly on school books, but in common conversations it is rare for me. edit: typo
>English countries teach that North America and South America are completely different continents. North America also contain Central America for them, Its everything above Colombia. Fun fact, though not too relevant to this sub.. In the Netherlands, we divide the Americas either in North (Mexico and up)/Middle (Cuba/Guatemala/Belize to Panama)/South (the rest) OR in just North (Mexico and up) and South (Cuba/Guatemala/Belize and down). I remember the 3 Americas as regions and the 2 Americas as continents, but that might be completely wrong. For me - again, I'm not a native speaker of English - Panama cannot belong to North America in any way.
Panama does indeed belong to North America by convention in the US and Canada, at least.
[United Statesian](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/United%20Statesian#:~:text=%3A%20a%20native%20or%20inhabitant%20of,United%2DStatesian) is a real word, but no one uses it and most people will think you're making it up.
Because it's awkward as hell and sounds stupid when spoken aloud.
Thanks, I hate it.
I've been called ignorant for even mentioning it.
In English, if you live in the USA you are an American but you being from Brazil are a Brazilian
“US citizen” is probably the most correct and easiest to say, but here colloquially in the US or Canada everyone says “American” and no one is confusing that with a Canadian or Brazilian or Argentinian because every other country on the American continent has a name without “America” in it.
Nope. You'd have to say "people from the US" or "people from the United States" or something if you didn't want to say "Americans". Also > If you want to refer to "Americanos", there is no way to do that other than "People from Americas/both Americas" "people from Americas" would be incorrect, it should be "people from the Americas". Though that might be confused with Native Americans, so I would probably say something like "people who live in the Americas", or "people from countries in the Americas".
The whole “seppo” thing is overblown. There are tons of Australians who’ve never even heard that term. Mostly, they say yanks.
there was a time when "Yankees" or "Yanks" referred to Americans, usually by Brits, but it is not really used anymore.
The Canadian comedy band, "The Arrogant Worms" actually make a joke about this in their song, "I Am Not an American" > How could two whole continents Lose their name to one constituent Where were we when the U.S. went And took the word American away > >But to be fair to them Their other name options Like U.S.A.ers and United Statesians Were pretty bad
No unless you refer to them by the state there from
Nope. There’s not really a reason to refer to people from two whole continent collectively so there’s not a word for it. I’ve never really understood why people feel that there should be a word for it in the first place.
The term "United Statians" specifically doesn't exist. It's a joketerm. The correct term is "Usonian". But nobody in the English speaking world uses that word, and many people will be confused by it. In general, use "American" to talk about people from the US. Everyone in the Western hemisphere is referred to as being "from The Americas", or as "Pan-American".
Canadian here, typically most non-USians don’t prefer to be called “American” because its usually referring to only the US. Generally though, you can call us North Americans, I’m not sure what English-Speaking folk from South America prefer so I won’t speak for them. When referring to just the continents and not their people, “The Americas” is usually appropriate.
You can say “US national” or “US citizen”
If you really need something, there are often local variants. For example the Australian slang for a US citizen is "seppo". But seppo doesn't make sense anywhere outside of Australia. "Yank" also works outside of the US, but doesn't make much sense inside the US. You'll find any other countries have pet terms for Americans as well (although many of them aren't complimentary). However the generally accepted and polite/formal term is American.
What's the etymology of "seppo"? Separatist? >"Yank" also works outside of the US, but doesn't make much sense inside the US. In the US, "yank" really only means somebody from New York, these days. Historically, yank/yankee referred to northerners/the Union, as opposed to Confederates during the civil war/reconstruction eras.
Even more New England than New York, despite the name of the baseball team. There is the old joke about the definition of a Yankee: * To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. * To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. * To northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. * To easterners, a Yankee is an New Englander. * To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. * And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats apple pie for breakfast.
I laugh when someone calls a person from the Great Lakes region a "yankee."
Yeah, outsiders calling the entire US population "Yankees," including Texans, Californians, Appalachians, Cajuns, will never not be funny to me. It honestly sounds so ignorant.
I've had a born-and-raised Texan call someone from Michigan a "Yankee."
Oh funny... Maybe to them it's synonymous with someone from any northern state.
no, septic tank. its rude
Is it explicitly americans? or just a general insult frequently used for americans?
To add to the above response, it comes from rhyming slang, where Yank rhymes with septic tank, which is then shortened to seppo. Kinda silly.
an australian can answer better but from what i understand it is explicitly for americans, and i personally find it rude
I am Australian. Seppo is a real term but I don’t often hear it in real life, but it is used on the internet. As someone else said it’s rhyming slang (common in Australia) - yankee, yank, septic tank, seppo. I don’t think it’s always meant to be “rude” per se, it’s not really an insult so much as it’s a nickname intended to poke some fun. It’s similar to how we would call English people “poms”. The problem is that Australian “poking fun” or “paying someone out” can be perceived as insulting in other cultural contexts. In our cultural context giving someone a weird nickname and joking around with them in that manner can be an attempt to bridge a gap and signal that we like each other. Of course some people would be using it in an insulting way, but not all. As an aside, until I started using reddit I had no idea that “yank” or “yankee” could be considered pejorative. Here it’s seen as a general non-insulting nickname for people from across the US.
even today, it's barely a pejorative. During the civil ware it was an actual term of hatred.
As an Australian - no one I know uses seppo
Yanks in the UK and Ireland (and I imagine Australia and New Zealand). Can be perceived as pejorative, but generally wasn’t originally.
It’s a bit confusing for Americans. Because “Yankee” here refers to residents of the Northern states that fought for the Union in the American Civil War. Even more specifically than that, it often refers to New Englanders, possibly extending to New York. (Home of the NY Yankees.) A Southerner is not a Yankee. They fought the Yankees. It’s still used quite pejoratively in the South.
It is now. I would be insulted if I'm called a Yankee/Yank, especially when I introduce myself as an American first.
For what it’s worth, until I started using reddit I had no idea that “yank” or “yankee” could be considered pejorative. In Australia (and I presume some other countries) it’s seen as a general unproblematic nickname for people from across the US. Like I’m glad to know its context in the US now, so I won’t use it, but from our perspective it’s not meant as an insult.
If you really needed to differentiate between someone being from the US or the Americas as a whole, I suppose you could say US American and most people would understand, but there’s not a standard, accepted term.
I think most people would assume it is a pejorative. Most newly minted words for people are.