# What to call people from the USA, other than "Americans?" **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 11, 2017, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031 "2017-07-11T19:59:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/21 "2017-07-11T21:32:31Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > I agree with the OP: calling USA residents “Americans” as a national demonym is a misuse of the word, even if it is very common usage. The engineer in me grates at the illogic of it. I’d support a new term. Why is that more logical than coming up with a new name for the continent(s)? ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/22 "2017-07-11T21:44:40Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Tell you what. If some Canadians want to refer to themselves as Americans, I say go ahead. Good for you! Somehow, I don’t think there will be many takers. I don’t think it’s so much that as the same attitude reflected in your post, the general inferiority/superiority complex hang up of some Canadians v the US. It’s not ‘we want to be called Americans’, it’s the supposed chauvinism of Americans being called that as another of the topics under which Canadians can eventually say ‘we’re glad we’re not Americans’. Whereas Americans don’t say the opposite because not they do want to be Canadians, but because they ever think about Canada a lot less than vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/23 "2017-07-11T22:11:59Z")
The USA was the first independent country established on the continent. I’m okay with claiming the name America for ourselves and letting everyone else come up with their own unique country names. Frankly, I’m glad we didn’t go with Columbia. I don’t see Brazilians, Kenyans or Indonesians getting confused for Ecuadorians either. The Equator spans the entire globe, but only one country claimed the name for themselves. You snooze, you lose. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/24 "2017-07-11T22:18:21Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Canadians had to good sense to give their country a name. They should be proud of that foresight. Americans had the good sense to give their country a name as well. And that name was America. We called dibs on it in 1776 before any other country was using it. So we have priority. We have a state called New Mexico. It was established in 1850. We didn’t tell the country of Mexico that they had to stop calling themselves Mexicans. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/25 "2017-07-11T22:31:17Z")
To be fair, the USA is hard. Its a Union of sovereign states. “of America” is not really the country, its just where the states are. I guess you could use the EU kind of as a comparison? You could call Canada the Canadian country of America too for that matter. I’m not sure what an exactly correct name would be? Kind of hard to change now what we have been referred to and referred to ourselves as for some 200 years. I guess you could go back to calling us the colonists or the colonials? In the EU everyone is still french or scottish or english or german, most of the world is not going to recognize a new yorker, or floridian, or georgian etc, guess american is easiest? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/26 "2017-07-11T22:33:42Z")
The word is “Yank,” or in Spanish, “Yanqui.” It always has been. I am confident that future historians will refer to this nation as “Yankea,” under some spelling. It will be a bit like how we refer to the medieval Hellenistic Romans as Byzantines even though they thought they were Romans. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/27 "2017-07-11T22:44:28Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > I understand there’s a Mexican word, _estadounidensos_, something more specific than the _norteamericanos_ that covers both US and Canada gringos, if you prefer. Subject of a nice scene in a great movie, _Barcelona_ by Whit Stillman. Skip to 1:58 in this clip to see the scene: [https://youtu.be/tToVrKnEmuw](https://youtu.be/tToVrKnEmuw) “DENSE! DENSE!” By the way, in case you’ve ever wondered where “gringo” comes from: the language podcast “Lexicon Valley” did an episode on it, and the consensus seemed to be that it probably came from “griego,” or “Greek.” As in “it’s all Greek to me,” or “what should we call those guys that talk funny?” > **[The Colorful Origin Stories of "Gringo" : Word Routes : Thinkmap Visual...](https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-colorful-origin-stories-of-gringo/)** > > Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus: Word Routes - For the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I delve into the many stories surrounding the origins of the word gringo, an epithet used by Latin Americans for foreign speakers, typically American Anglophones. Though a... > [@](#): > > The use of Greek as a stand-in for an unintelligible “foreigner talk” is something familiar to English speakers as well, as in the expression “It’s all Greek to me.” And languages like English and Spanish likely picked on Greek because of monastic scribes of the medieval era who had difficulty transcribing Greek bits of Latin manuscripts. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/28 "2017-07-11T22:47:42Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > As I understand it, there is a (very small) minority of Canadians who consider the term “American” objectionable when used to refer to someone from the United States, as it implies that Canadians are not American. > > Certainly Canadians are from the North American continent as much as people from the USA are, and are 100% “American” in that regard, but for convenience there needs to be a term used to denote someone who is from the USA and USA alone. What would be that term? > > USA-ers? “Stater?” Where are you from? Around here (USA! USA!) Canadians are Canadians, Mexicans are Mexicans, and those between are Americans. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/29 "2017-07-11T22:49:44Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > The word is “Yank,” or in Spanish, “Yanqui.” See the YouTube clip I linked to in the just-previous-but-one post: “Yanqui” is “clearly perjorative!”😛 (Doesn’t mean we won’t get stuck with it or won’t deserve to.) ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/30 "2017-07-11T23:14:35Z")
I also have been to a number of other countries, and more than that, have read, heard and watched commentary of various kinds from all around the world. Although I’ve heard this rather silly (though nominally logical) complaint a few times, I have never even once, come across anyone who heard, wrote, or read the label American, and failed to correctly take that to refer to a citizen of the United States. Nor have I even once, heard even the people voicing the thread complaint, demand that THEY be referred to as American (though not from USA). Every time I HAVE run across this conversation, it hasn’t been the result of some sober individual having sensitively concluded that they felt that the gentle spirit of the Logic Of Labels had been unjustly assaulted by it. It has INVARIABLY been some one with something rude up their own keister, filled with resentments against America (so there!), who decided to register an oblique assault on us, because they felt too inconsequential to do anything more. In short, petty resentment on the complainers’ part. Or an occasional intellectual humorist at work. But as others have said above, the name is firmly established and understood universally. Even the people who want to complain about it and overturn it, know exactly what it means, and are not in the least confused by it. And besides, there is absolutely no history of anyone in the entire North and South or even Central American “areas,” ever having to be FORCED, by any American, to refer to themselves as something else, while they ached to be called some sort of XXX-American. My final note on it, is that the worldwide commonly agreed upon Rule of Word Meanings, is that whatever most people think a word means, is what that word means. Period. American refers to United States Citizens. Period. Not because we forced anyone to agree to that, but because EVERYONE decided that that is what that word refers to. After all, I love words, and using them correctly, more than most people do, actually. And I constantly have to give way, and accept that all SORTS of words which I know well mean something else entirely different from the way people now use them, now mean whatever THEY want them to mean, because that’s how it all works in this world. The whole world has already voted. And “American” means citizen of the United States. You don’t like it? Don’t bother to come up with other names, until you get the entire rest of the world, or at least fifty-one percent of it on your side. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/31 "2017-07-11T23:17:17Z")
By the way, I do have one small suggestion, should powerful aliens descend and demand a new name for us. We should allow all the people on this hemisphere to refer to themselves as Americans, with whatever prefixes or suffixes or hyphenates they like, and we can refer to ourselves, and require everyone else as well, to refer to us exclusively, as “Mirkaans.” ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/32 "2017-07-11T23:17:18Z")
The same old Yank ignorance on display in this thread! > [@Corry\_El](#): > > In English, ‘American’ means of, from or pertaining to the USA. That’s not chauvinism but just the basic meaning of a word. It is exactly a chauvinistic way to define the word, though. I’m not saying that _we_ are chauvinistic when we use it, but putting it in the lexicon that way created a structural chauvinism. > [@msmith537](#): > > People from Mexico, the USA and Canada are all “North Americans”. People from Brazil or Argentina are “South Americans”. People from the United States of America are “Americans”. This does not make logical sense. And the continent had the name first. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Why is that more logical than coming up with a new name for the continent(s)? Now that suggestion _is_ chauvinistic. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Americans had the good sense to give their country a name as well. And that name was America. We called dibs on it in 1776 before any other country was using it. So we have priority. Again, the continent had the name first. Note that neither South Africa nor Central African Republic insist that they have dibs on “Africa.” This level of chauvinism is distinctively ours. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > We have a state called New Mexico. It was established in 1850. We didn’t tell the country of Mexico that they had to stop calling themselves Mexicans. Nueva México had the name long before that, even before the modern polity of México was carved out of New Spain. > [@Weisshund](#): > > To be fair, the USA is hard. It’s not that hard. You just have to pick a name. > [@Weisshund](#): > > Its a Union of sovereign states. > “of America” is not really the country, its just where the states are. Right. And that’s what it was at the beginning. We just never named it properly, and later generations learned the meaning wrong, and you get, well, the yokels in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/33 "2017-07-11T23:17:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Which is ironic, because Mexicans are also from the United States. yabbut: people from Estados Unidos Mexicanos: Mexican. people from United States of America: American I suppose if Canada was called “United Provinces of America” there’d be an issue, but it isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/34 "2017-07-11T23:19:56Z")
Oh, and “gringo” means “person who doesn’t speak our language.” Non-Spanish-speaker in Hispanoamérica, non-Portuguese-speaker in Brazil. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/35 "2017-07-11T23:28:49Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > This does not make logical sense. And the continent had the name first. > > Again, the continent had the name first. Continents aren’t countries. If the [Federal Republic of Central America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Republic_of_Central_America) had survived then there would be a legitimate argument. Since it did not there is no chauvinism involved, except the imagined chauvinism that says because the USA is huge and a bully in other respects, this must be bullying as well. No. American is a perfectly logical demonym for citizen of the United States of America and it is more euphonious than any other choice so far suggested. The stale old arguments otherwise are losers. ---
**Author:** ![Trancephalic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trancephalic/32/380_2.png) [@Trancephalic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trancephalic)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/36 "2017-07-11T23:31:05Z")
What the hell is Canandia? ---
**Author:** ![anomalous1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e56c9b/32.png) [@anomalous1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anomalous1)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/37 "2017-07-11T23:42:15Z")
I always thought Canadia sounded better. In all seriousness though, it comes down to first dibs. So if from the U.S. they are “American” if you are referring to where they are from, you can always say “The States” as well. It’s just commonly accepted/people anywhere will know what you are referring to. Has nothing to do with unfairness or anything of that nature. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/38 "2017-07-12T01:36:07Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > As I understand it, there is a (very small) minority of Canadians who consider the term “American” objectionable when used to refer to someone from the United States, as it implies that Canadians are not American. Can you provide a cite for that? I’ve never heard a fellow Canadian make that argument, and I’ve lived in three different provinces and travelled to nine provinces and two territories. > [@](#): > > Certainly Canadians are from the North American continent as much as people from the USA are, and are 100% “American” in that regard, … No. Just no. I’m a Canadian, not an American. Americans live south of 49 and don’t even have a Queen, poor souls. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/39 "2017-07-12T01:40:42Z")
I don’t understand why anyone thinks we should give a crap about what a tiny minority of people from another country think about what we call ourselves. I bet the German don’t have to put up with this kind of bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031/40 "2017-07-12T01:46:10Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > In short, petty resentment on the complainers’ part. I agree. But they’ll always find a few grovelers who are anxious to apologize for anything and everything. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-call-people-from-the-usa-other-than-americans/791031.md?page=3)