I occasionally see discussions on this board about some people objecting to the use of “Americans” to mean citizens of the USA, apparently on the basis that “America” really means all of the New World land mass.
Two questions:
Is this a common objection or just some sort of fringe element?
What term do they propose to use instead of “Americans” to refer to citizens of the USA?
In some other languages, they use an equivalent of “United States-ian”; “estadounidense” in Spanish, IIRC, also “usona” in Esperanto. On the other hand, in French I say, “Je suis américan”. On the third hand, in English, I usually say “the States” instead of “America”…
In my experience, it usually comes from Latin Americans, and is not a real objection but rather a political statement about the domination of the hemisphere by the US. They don’t want to use the term americanos for themselves; they just object to people from the US using it.
Although the word estadounidense exists and is sometimes used, in practice, the most frequent term is norteamericano. This makes even less sense than americano since technically it also includes Canadians and Mexicans, and is not even part of the name of the country.
Some possible options:
Gringo, Yank (or Yankee), Usonian, Fredonian, Uesican, United Stater.
I’m not aware of any US citizens who object to the term. I’ve heard that some Canadians and Mexicans object to it, but I don’t know the details.
Freedonia might take exception! (“This means war!”)
ETA: Fred might take exception too.
USAian pops up fairly often here on SDMB.
What Colibri said. And for the first, very often they’re not really intending to use the longer and less-pronunceable estadounidenses; they just think it’s kind of bothersome that a single country co-opted the name of a continent (or, depending on your school system, two or three). Africano refers to people from a whole continent, europeo same, asiático same… but americano means people from a fraction of America-the-continent (actually, not even exactly that, as someone from Hawaii is americano but not from the American continent). Hence the need to come up with “the Americas” and similar expressions to clarify that we’re talking about the continent, not the country. The objection tends to be more of a joke than anything else, the bother is… well, bothersome; more in certain contexts than in others.
(“We’ll be having a meeting including people from European and American factories…” “Brazilian raising handWill that include us or is it American-Americans only?”)
Not this again! I’d thought it was settled already. “American” is *the *correct term for Americans, and the only correct term, when speaking English. When using other languages, the rule may differ. In Spanish, the whole Western Hemisphere is las Américas, so americano could theoretically mean anybody from either continent, which is why they have to specify estadounidense for us. (Leaving aside the fact that we’re not the only Estados Unidos on this continent! That could get really complicated if we let it!)
Really, my fellow USA citizens, thinking you mustn’t call yourself American when speaking English is as dumb as Christians typing “G-d” on the internet. It looks stilted, if not altogether phony. When speaking Spanish, call yourself estadounidense or norteamericano. When speaking English, just call yourself American already and have done with it.
In German-speaking countries, the expression US-Amerikaner (“US American”) is quite common and it isn’t (at least not necessarily) derogatory. There are almost 600,000 hits for US-Amerikaner on Google.
U.S.-based academic geographers I know tend to use “U.S. citizen” or “from the U.S.” instead of “American.” Mainly to make a minor pedagogical point to their audience – they don’t really expect the masses to stop using “American.” (They agree with Johanna that the common term is “correct,” in English. Not in Spanish, despite clueless ESPN commentators snickering when they mention the Mexican soccer team América).
As for the OP’s second question: I just thought of a term (surely I’m not the first): rotus, meaning “resident of the United States.”
I like how it resembles the Latin word for “wheel,” evoking the American predilection for restlessly “hitting the road” – car culture, the Beach Boys, all that stuff…
Rodents of truly unusual size? I don’t think they exist.
More seriously, it does line up with potus and flotus…
Rodents of truly unusual size do indeed exist: Capybara - Wikipedia They’re even natives of America. The continents that is.
Humans and primates are just overgrown semi-evolved rodents to begin with … and gringo is an excellent word for Anglo-Americans.
If you’re speaking Spanish, or to a Latin American audience, sure. Of course, you’d be speaking to the latter in Latin anyway.
… where does the third one go?
Colonials.
I was taught three: North, South and Central America.
But not all Americans are Anglos. I’m askin if there is a generally accepted and generally used term in Spanish for citizens of the United States, other than American (Americano?)
You were taught that Central America is a continent? So there are only three North American countries?