# Widespread use of "US" as a term for the country **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2017, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089 "2017-03-13T14:27:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/21 "2017-03-14T06:15:01Z")
Thanks to UDS. You said what I was about to say. It seems like whoever wrote the TV episode didn’t understand the situation. In the 1890s a Risaldar or Risaldar-Major wouldn’t even have been allowed to eat at the same table as British officers. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/22 "2017-03-14T06:57:41Z")
Yes. I’d overlooked the information in the OP that the events were set in 1897. The OP specifies the “Bengal Lancers”; that is a real unit of the Indian army in 1897. There would certainly have been no officer in that unit in 1897 with the rank of Major and the name of Al-Qadir. (For that matter, while there are plenty of Muslims in India, I don’t think many of them have Arabic names. So on a number of grounds historical verisimilitude doesn’t seem to have been a priority for the writers of this peice. But, to revert to the question posed in the OP, “U.S. Army” is perfectly plausible in a British context in 1897.) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/23 "2017-03-14T11:22:51Z")
Histoical Versimilitude was certainly a major priority. Historical _accuracy_ was not. The former is essential. The latter is liagnappe. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/24 "2017-03-14T12:26:50Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Histoical Versimilitude was certainly a major priority. Historical _accuracy_ was not. > > The former is essential. The latter is liagnappe. In general, anyone who gets their history from movies or TV shows is likely to have some very wrong ideas. **The important point about history movies, TV series, and even documentaries, is that they are created as _entertainment_.** The creators usually couldn’t care less about accuracy. They only care about how much income it generates, full stop. And that means pandering to the lowest common denominator. If they talk about the ‘accuracy’ of an historical movie, it’s usually just another selling point, it doesn’t mean anything. Even documentaries (e.g. history channel) need to have a high entertainment value, and if the creators need to rearrange the truth a bit to get the entertainment, that’s no problem to them. What matters to me is not so much the details of costumes, set, etc. - but rather that the way that the characters think, speak and act should be historically accurate. In almost all movies the characters speak and act like 21st century people, and the movie deals with modern issues. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/25 "2017-03-14T15:03:23Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > The links refer to havildar-majors, subedar-majors and the like. These are not commissioned officers; they represent an intermediate class between enlisted men and commissioned officers which wasn’t found in the regular British forces and which represented, basically, the highest level that native soldiers could attain in the Indian forces. A Subedar-Major or Risaldar-Major would not be addressed or referred to as “Major”, any more than a sergeant-major would be. > > These officers might have significant command responsibilities, but only over native troops. They were subordinate to all British commissioned officers (known in the jargon as “King’s Commissioned Officers”), of whatever rank. > > Late in the piece this began to change, and from the 1920s onwards under a policy of “Indianisation” a number of Indian cadets were sent to the UK to complete officer training, and were given full regular commissions as “King’s Comissioned Indian Officers”, with parity with their British counterparts. But this proceeded very slowly, and by the Second World War only a tiny proportion of the Indian Army’s comissioned officers were Indian. The character in this novel appears to be one of them. A minor nitpick: Subedar-Majors and Risaldar-Majors were commissioned officers but they were Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers (VCOs) as opposed to King’s Commissioned Officers. Otherwise spot on. ---
**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:** [March 14, 2017, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/26 "2017-03-14T15:08:14Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > I don’t think the British _did_ “almost invariably” call the US “America” in the nineteenth century, not least because the British still had their own possession in America at the time. (The Canadian provinces were federated by an Act of the Westminster Parliament called the _British North America Act 1867_.) “American” was a common adjective meaning, in the right context, “pertaining to the United States” (American currency, the American government) but the country itself was commonly called “the United States”, and I’d expect that from fairly early on “U.S.” was an abbreviation commonly used in newspaper headlines, and “U.S. Army” would have been readily understood. The OED has citations for “U.S.” from 1834 and for “United States” (in British, not American, sources) from 1812. We don’t agree then. The official name of the country ‘United States of America’ existed and therefore was known to knowledgeable people, obviously. I never said otherwise. Similarly a professional military man might know that the professional cadre of the US Army used that term in the 19th century to refer to themselves though the forces the US put into the field in wars were not necessarily called ‘the US Army’, but were ‘armies’ composed of US regiments (‘the regulars’) and state volunteer regiments. The latter were not ‘the US Army’ nor the composite armies called that even in the US. But Brits referred to the US as ‘America’ in normal conversation, almost invariably, until pretty recently and in some cases still. Likewise popular publications would call it ‘America’ and some still do (‘The Economist’ still does). Nor was there any confusion with Canada. From the mid 19th century the name of that place was invariably ‘Canada’, no confusion with ‘America’, the common British term for the United States. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/27 "2017-03-14T15:10:51Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Taking a different tack, you can look up digitised newspaper archives. > > I just tried _Trove_, which is the Australian one. Typing ‘US’ and ‘USA’ both give massive jumps in cites from the 1840s into the 1850s. Some spot checks show ‘US’ used in the form referred to by the OP. > > Ignoring the coincident rise in newspaper publication at the same time, this also matches the start of the gold-rush era, with many Americans, including USanians, coming to Australia, better communications and a more literate public. Just as confirmation, the British Newspaper Archive shows many, many references to U S Army in the period 1890 to 1899. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/28 "2017-03-14T15:54:35Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > In general, anyone who gets their history from movies or TV shows is likely to have some very wrong ideas. > > **The important point about history movies, TV series, and even documentaries, is that they are created as _entertainment_.** > > The creators usually couldn’t care less about accuracy. They only care about how much income it generates, full stop. And that means pandering to the lowest common denominator. If they talk about the ‘accuracy’ of an historical movie, it’s usually just another selling point, it doesn’t mean anything. > > Even documentaries (e.g. history channel) need to have a high entertainment value, and if the creators need to rearrange the truth a bit to get the entertainment, that’s no problem to them. > > What matters to me is not so much the details of costumes, set, etc. - but rather that the way that the characters think, speak and act should be historically accurate. In almost all movies the characters speak and act like 21st century people, and the movie deals with modern issues. If I wanted to discuss how historically accurate the show is I would have put this is CS. I mentioned the background of the show because that’s how the question came into my mind. It was much easier to ask the question within the context of the show. I don’t expect dramas to be 100% accurate. This is afterall a show where the Elephant Man was murdered by a fictional character. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/29 "2017-03-14T17:22:48Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > What matters to me is not so much the details of costumes, set, etc. - but rather that the way that the characters think, speak and act should be historically accurate. In almost all movies the characters speak and act like 21st century people, and the movie deals with modern issues. A drama with people using the London dialect of the late 19th Century would almost certainly need subtitles, even for us natives. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/30 "2017-03-14T18:30:16Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > “U.S.A.” seems to have become commonplace at the time of the [Civil War.](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=U.S.A.&year_start=1800&year_end=1900&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CU.S.A.%3B%2Cc0). > > “U.S.” became more widespread later. However, it was [not unknown](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=U.S&year_start=1800&year_end=1900&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CU.S%3B%2Cc0) at time of the show. [U.S. Army](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=U.S.+army%2Cu.s.%2Cu.s.a.&year_start=1800&year_end=1900&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CU.S.%20army%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cu.s.%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cu.s.a.%3B%2Cc0) was also used at the time. > > So it looks like it was a bit unusual to say “U.S. Army,” people would have known what it meant. In Troy NY, near Schenectady and my hometown of Latham, [meat packer Samuel Wilson, now claimed to be the original Uncle Sam, stamped his meat products with “ **US** ” during the War of 1812](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Sam#Evolution). One data point relevant to this discussion is the year 1974. That is when the ISO country codes standard was published: _ISO 3166, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions_. The standard has alpha-2 (e.g., US, CA for Canada, MX for Mexico, AU for Australia, and AT for Austria; these are often used for internet country domain codes), and alpha-3 (e.g., USA, CAN, MEX, AUS, and AUT, respectively). ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/31 "2017-03-14T18:41:11Z")
I’ve got a weird example. During World War 2 with the United States sending a lot of war material and supplies to the Soviet Union as part of lend-lease, there was quite a number of pieces of equipment including tanks that still had the various US manufacturers stamps including the initials **USA** on it. Trucks in particular tended to have **USA** stenciled onto the doors. Because of the fact that the Soviets used Cyrillic script and not the Latin script, they weren’t familiar with the initials (A quick google search reveals in Cyrillic it would be **США** for **USA** ) so they just assumed they were something other than a country of origin indicator, and those who were familiar with Latin made up their own meanings for the initials including “Ubiyat Sukensyna Adolfa” or “Kill that son of a bitch Adolf”. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/32 "2017-03-14T20:42:02Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > … > and the Princely States ruled much of the rest — albeit with a British Agent to keep them in line ( like a Soviet Political Officer, or a present day American adviser east of Suez ) > … I’ve nothing to add to the OP’s question, but I got a laugh out of that phrasing. Well done Good Sir! ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/33 "2017-03-14T22:33:10Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > I’ve got a weird example. > > During World War 2 with the United States sending a lot of war material and supplies to the Soviet Union as part of lend-lease, there was quite a number of pieces of equipment including tanks that still had the various US manufacturers stamps including the initials **USA** on it. Trucks in particular tended to have **USA** stenciled onto the doors. > > Because of the fact that the Soviets used Cyrillic script and not the Latin script, they weren’t familiar with the initials (A quick google search reveals in Cyrillic it would be **США** for **USA** ) so they just assumed they were something other than a country of origin indicator, and those who were familiar with Latin made up their own meanings for the initials including “Ubiyat Sukensyna Adolfa” or “Kill that son of a bitch Adolf”. Now the question has been answered (mostly!) might be worth adding the other problem the initials US caused in WW2. In the British forces “US” stood for Un-Serviceable and it was common slang to say anything that didn’t work or was rubbish was US - didn’t go down well our trans-Atlantic allies :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/34 "2017-03-14T23:38:11Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > those who were familiar with Latin made up their own meanings for the initials including “Ubiyat Sukensyna Adolfa” or “Kill that son of a bitch Adolf”. The enemy of your enemy is only a pseudo-friend,hey. They accepted the help from USA, but the propaganda was that they were the next the imperial colonists…and the help was only provided to beat the fascists. So its not clear that they didn’t know what USA meant in latin script … they would knowingly make the false expansion of USA. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089/35 "2017-03-15T13:26:49Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > A drama with people using the London dialect of the late 19th Century would almost certainly need subtitles, even for us natives. I am in no way claiming that they use the proper dialect in the show but they do attempt to speak in a different manner than modern English. I found that especially in the first couple of seasons the odd phrasing and word choice combined with the accents made it hard for me to follow. My brain was always a little behind trying to figure out what was going on. I have to put the closed captioning on. Whether or not it’s accurate I believe they at least pay lip service to the fact that speak paterns were different. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/widespread-use-of-us-as-a-term-for-the-country/782089.md?page=1)