United States or America

I was wondering: which shortening for ‘The United States of America’ is used more: ‘The United States’ (or the U.S.) or ‘America’?

I couldn’t find anything on this, and it is probably a long shot that there was actually a study on this or anything. Prove me wrong :smiley:

From my personal experience (no study here), outside the US, it is the “US” or “The States” or some such thing. In the US, it is “America”, I guess, because most Americans don’t realize, or care, how offensive the term has become to other North Americans, or South Americans.

A Google search yields:

US=348 million hits
America=44 million hits
United States=6.8 million hits

billy, I agree about the offensivity of ‘America’, but how often is North, Central, or South America mentioned as a single body, and not just by individual countries. Nowhere near as much as the U.S. is.

samclem, did you search ‘U.S.’ or just ‘us’? Surely the word ‘us’ is going to get a bizillion hits. I also don’t think googling is a great idea for this- partial matches (states, united, America (as in the other Americas)) would probably skew the results.

And then there is Mexico, which is really “Los Estados Unidos de Mexico”

“America” is quite common in the UK as well, from my experience.

Anyway, there’s nothing at all offensive about using “America” to refer to the US; English-speaking people have been doing so for hundreds of years, and no one gets confused as to what you mean. I’m not sure how the term is perceived in other languages though.

“back in the world”

“The Colonies”?

:smiley:

Cite?

Funny, I’ve lived in Mexico for 24 years and have yet to meet one Mexican who finds it offensive. Let’s see, they call us americanos, norteamericanos, estadounidenses amongst other things. Americano is the term heard most frequently. This whole debate has been discussed ad nauseum.

Try calling a Mexican an American (or estadounidense) to his face and see how they react.

Actually it’s “Estados Unidos Mexicanos”.

Please note that this bears no relevance to the adjective “American”. This unmodified adjective unambiguously refers to the United States.

As for the noun, most Canadians I’ve heard call it the United States, the US, or the States, not America, to the point where I notice it when someone calls it America - and when an American, as is his or her custom, repeatedly refers to “America,” it really makes itself noticed.

My mother, an American expat who’s been here for about twenty-five years, now calls it the States.

Yes Matt and I should have paid a little closer attention. For what it’s worth here it is usually referred to as “los estados unidos”.

I agree with Matt. My constant chatting with a Canadian friend (the guy who played that La Bolduc song in this thread ) online has gotten me in the habit of saying the “U.S.” or “'States”.

If you call us Americans (as if we owned the term) why is it offensive that we call the place we are from, America. Why take offence to the nation’s name but not the nationality’s. Seems odd really.

I have based my experience on time spent in Asia working with mostly Americans, but also Canadians, some Australians, and the occasional Brit. The Canadians seemed to really hate it when Americans refered to the US as America. I mean you could count on a reaction if some American refered to the US as America in front of one of several Canadian friends there. I heard several lectures, from more than one Canadian, to more than one American, about the arogance involved with calling the USA “America”. I didn’t understand either, but didn’t need to. They found the term offensive, so I didn’t use it.

The news papers seemed to refer to the US as USA, US, United States.

The above posts sure make it look like my experience was not the norm. Like I said, my comments were based on personal experience, not on any study.

Associated Press style is to use “United States” as the name of the country “U.S.” as the adjective.

I don’t think it is arrogance so much as habit. It’s a decent thing to be sensitive to the feelings of others though and I’m glad that you posted that info.

What really bugged me was the day that a local television anchor referred to how well Mexicans got along with “North Americans.” I called the station but they still didn’t get it.

Er, “we” gets 309 million hits. “You” gets 619 million. Do you think there might be a flaw in searching for “us”?

Splanky and amarone. YOu’re both right, of course.

But Googling “The US” still produces 8 million hits.

Carry on.

Ahem.

The name of my country, as written on our Declaration of Independence, is The United States of America. 200+ years ago the founders decided to include the continent’s name, America, in the country’s name.

Any other past or future country on the continent of North or South America could just as easily and rightfully have incorporated it into their country’s name. None other chose to (I think :)).

Yes, everyone on either continent could theoretically be called ‘American’, but continents don’t mean squat to anybody except 3rd grade geography teachers. People define themselves by their nation.

So when we refer to our nation as America, or to ourselves as Americans, we are not unjustly or arrogantly hijacking or oppressing anything from anybody. It is our friggin’ country’s name!