Boy. Buy your books and send you to school and…
United States of America (the name of a continent which contains lotsa countries).
United States of Mexico (a country, not the name of a continent).
I’ve heard the OP’s arguement from quite a few ferners. And I sympathize. But you can’t fight convention.
Would have been cool, though, if we had gotten our very own name. How about “The United States of Washington”? Or “of New England”?
Uh, the distinction you’re trying to make doesn’t make much sense.
“United States of America” is the name of a country and is often referred to simply as “America.”
“Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos” aka the United Mexican States is the name of a country and is generally referred to as “Mexico.”
America is an easier and more convenient country-noun to say than USA. The corresponding nationality-noun for America is easy - American. The corresponding nationality-noun for USA would be United Station, USAlien or Statian - similar to Emirati for United Arab Emirates and Soviets when USSR was around. These terms are too cumbersome. For Peruvians, Venezuelans, Canadians, Belizeans and Dominicans etc it is straight forward.
I would prefer to call them Americans from America, even though the country is really the USA.
You have my sympathy though Zoo, the same thing caused me confusion when I travelled to the USA after being taught at school that America was split into two continents.
I don’t know how to be more sensible, chula.
“America” is part of the name of both a country and a continent.
“Mexico” is not. That’s the crux of the OP’s (and others’) problem
It’s not really that important anyway. We’ll continue to call them as we do. I gave up on the idea of change when we failed to fully adopt the metric system.
I’ll stand behind Colibri on this one. Understand we don’t see one continent, we see two. One named North America, one named South America. So where’s the conflict?
I think the view of seeing North and South America as one continent is a little Eurocentric, lumping all us New Worlders into one. After all the Africa is more connected to Asia then North America is to South America. And North Africa and the Middle East share as much language, culture and environment as do Central and South America.
But it’s not a continent. It seems like most people think of there bing seven continents, and those who think six usually do the (more logical) contraction of Europe and Asia into one continent, not North America and South America.
Zoo: "Are they lazy to say the whole name of their country, or they do really believe that their name is America. "
They who? Seems like the rest of the world refers to the people of the U.S. as Americans. IOW there are more of y’all calling us Americans than there are of us.
…and BTW I’ve always thought of Canadians and Mexicans as Americans, some even more so than some of us “Yanks”.
…and if you can handle the pressure, you can be an American too!
Huh. Zoo’s bad post and the subsequent storm got whacked, and the thread is once again unlocked. So, can a thread given a new life go in a different direction? Is a thread’s fate static?
The pit thread about this thread probably got ‘lost’ too…
So, to summarize: There are two continents which contain the word America, as well as our country (Any other countries?). Since Asians, Europeans, Africans, and Australians don’t refer to themselves as being a member of more than one continent, and because ‘American’ is the only good shorthand for ‘a person from the United States of America’, no one cares that said people of the US call themselves Americans (except people with some other axe to grind).
I am Iowan, American, North American, and Terran.
ZooMetropolis is Amazonan or Vargan or Araguan or (one of 25 states, district & dependency)n, Venezuelan, South American, and quite possibly Terran.
Just watch West Side Story. 
Question Zoo. When someone screams “Death to America” does that include yourself?
Hmmm, before the crash, a mod had locked this thread.
Well, while I can, I may as well say the op’s position is stupid.
The real life problem isn’t what you call the country, it’s how you refer to the residents - what convenient term is there that is more concise than “citizens of the USA”?
I have no problem with the USA being called “America” although I see only one continent “America”. That is how it is tought in school in Germany. Seeing North and Southamerica as two distinct continents seems to be a US-thing. But after all it is just a matter of definition.
The Olympic Rings are meant to symbolize the five continents Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and America. Antarctica is left out for obvious reasons…
Interesting discussion here. Just a note. In Canada, by describing something as “american” or someone as “American” people pretty much always mean just the USA. But rarely (if ever?) do Canadians actually refer to the USA as “America” – a little too over-the-top, I guess – it’s always “the States” or “the USA”.
Now I feel that your definition, and the definition of many people is an Old World political view of the continental matter. One Zoo and his brethren inherited from Spain who probably saw little reason to place a boundary right smack dab in the middle of their New World holdings. One that seems clearly political since, as I showed in my post that was lost, Africa has a much stronger connection to Asia then does North America to South America.
And I don’t think you can support that view scientifically. When you look at it this way I think there are only 6 continents that are Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America and South America. And you’d make a seperation between Africa and Eurasia and North America and South America since they both have a small connection (compared to overall perimeter length) to another body and sit on their own continental plates. Also the Isthmus of Panama is a relatively recent land mass. The two continents were seperated for most of the last 100 million years by a large strait. And sometime in the near geological future will return to seperate us once again.
I don’t think anyone will change though, especially not us. Do you realize how many important songs we have that refer to us as America? And to all those that are bothered by the fact that we say that we live in America and call ourselves Americans I say this. All those people living in the country of Georgia have some how managed to survive despite the fact that we’ve had our own Georgia for centuries. And India seems to be doing just fine despite the fact that an Old World fellow dubbed the locals here Indians.
Political? I can’t understand how an arbitrary way of dividing the land masses on the Earth into smaller entities could be a political matter.
And, oh BTW, I also can’t understand how you guys can be so upset by us calling the landmass on the other side of the Atlantic simply America. We do, however, for practical reasons, divide it into South, Central and North America.
Well the continents are not really an arbitrary means of divinding the land masses. The word continent has a definition. Or at least that’s the way I’ve learned it. Actually looking at my Webster’s unabridged and at the Cambridge Dictionary on-line both list the seven continents as their primary definition. And they both give 7 continents (North America, South America and so forth). Surprisingly Webster’s doesn’t give the definition I’m familiar with until the 5th entry “a continuous tract … of land.” And when viewed with that definition you can see that seperating Europe from Asia is political since although they share the same landmass they aren’t the same as the Asians and should be seperated from them.
And there’s some other evidence to the political aspect since both the Oxford and Cambridge dictionarys make North America and South America into seperate continents. Although since the Oxford is pay I can only come to this conclusions from the “How to subscribe” page. Why would two countries seperated by such a small distance have such differing opinions on what the continents are? By the way I think you’re confusing my definition of political. I don’t means having to do with elections and debates and whatnot but rather that it was easier for governments to make and use such definitions.
Now that I think about it a little more I believe I can say that the way of determining whether a particular landmass is a continent of not has changed over time going from a political to a growing scientific manner over the past 3,000 years. It would be interesting to plot a graph of usage of the term Eurasia versus year in some standard geological journal. I would imagine that it’s been on a steady rise since the deiscovery of continental drift.
We’re not upset because some people call the two continents America. Frankly we could care less. The reason some people seem upset in this thread is due to the mildly insulting nature of the OP. Frankly it seems as though they are more upest about us calling ourselves Americans and our land America. Look, for example, at the way he addressed his cousin. For what it’s worth it does seem as though it is standard in English to see 7 continents and it seems common courtesy to refer to them as such in English. Much like how, were I to travel to London, I would call elevators lifts and flashlights torches. It’s not too difficult. I certainly wouldn’t look at them and say “that’s an elevator.”
Well, I’d be more likely to lump together Europe and Asia, since they appear to be one huge land mass. North America and South America are connected by a tiny strip of land.
Seems that if you’re gonna use that tiny strip to make the two continents (North America and South America) into one (America), you should use that one huge land mass to make two continents (Europe and Asia) into one (Eurasia). It just seems to be the logical thing to do.
Either that, or accept that there’s seven total continents, including Europe AND Asia, and North America AND South America.
Yup.