There's a similar thing about adjective Russian, which in English used to refer to the whole land of Russia, while in Russian language itself, there are two adjectives "russkiy" = "of Russian ethnicity / language" and "rossianin" - "of Russian Federation", which is a country that apparetly has many other ethnicities who when referred to as "ruski" might be offended. In English, however, they don't have a distinct adjective. I believe many misunderstandings of Russia from the "West" come from not drawing that distinction. So, I do very much support the usage of Unitedstatesian haha, at least with ironic connotation, which might be enough just to remind about the actual geography.
Perhaps, everyone's "Soviet", etc. Still imperialistic and suppressive to individual nation's identities, just under new ideology, maybe even more than during the Russian Empire (e.g. Soviets standartised language, alphabet, etc.) but at least not using a name of one nation as an umbrella term.
Also, remember that kids in the US learn that "Colombus discovered America." You would expect he put his feet on the US, but no; he never did it. He only reached Bahamas, Cuba etc. Historically, the Americas were one single continent: America. If America, otherwise, is the country, kids should stop learning that Colombus discovered America; it's fake news.
I think the world at large is destabilizing. It could be useful to have such a volatile leader in office over the next 4 years. The US hegemony is fading and there is an extremely high likelihood of China attempting to seize global dominance in 2027-2028. In fact, his whole point in trolling these small countries is simply to counter growing Chinese influence in these regions. It is easy to paint him as the bad guy but in reality he is the lesser of two global evils. I don’t like him as a person, but I think he is better prepared to lead the US into a likely WWIII conflict in the next few years than Kamala for certain.
I am sympathetic to this argument and considered it when the election was ongoing. Sometimes having a chaotic leader who will shake up things can indeed be beneficial, especially when the "system" has become entrenched in a suboptimal way.
I don't really buy the idea that 2024-2025 is a time that calls for it, though, considering just how well the United States has been going (economically, technologically, culturally etc.) since the pandemic compared to basically all other countries.
Well China has definitely started to play their hand more blatantly, I think it would be dumb to ignore them as a genuine threat much longer.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump is a total asshat. But I would rather a strong-handed arrogant jackass to lead us into WWIII than a fence-sitting, blows-with-the-wind, chameleon of a politician. I think he’s mostly just inflaming the media with his words right now, which is one of the things he does best.
Time flies by on the global stage. We have to start positioning ourselves better for a potential conflict. Tariffs will likely burden our economy but force American manufacturing to be revived which will be crucial in any global conflict (likely with drone warfare). Then we have the AGI conversation, which is a whole other can of worms. The world is on the brink of immense change.
IMO the discussion of the USA trying to hold claim to the name “America” is a total nonissue. I for one will still call it the Gulf of Mexico, just like I still call X, Twitter. It’s a poor attempt at rebranding by egomaniacs. But we should not let that distract us from the real issues.
"Well China has definitely started to play their hand more blatantly, I think it would be dumb to ignore them as a genuine threat much longer."
Did the Biden administration ignore them, though? I'm very (very) far from being an expert on the subject, but Biden’s export controls plan to limit China's access to advanced chips were often presented as a very aggressive move. The push to ban TikTok also took place under his administration.
Additionally, people on Metaculus seem to believe that under a Democratic administration, the probability of the U.S. intervening in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be higher than under Trump. So, it’s not obvious to me that a Kamala Harris administration would have been particularly naive on China.
(And this is coming from someone who thinks quite a few of Trump’s recent executive orders were actually good — I’m far from a hater.)
I did some thinking about this naming issue some years ago (I am as liberal as liberal can be)…I wanted to be more sensitive to my friends in other countries of North and South America. But I realized a unique thing. Most countries of the whole world have a long official name and a shortened version using the main name within the longer one. So Croatia is Republic of Croatia, but we just call it Croatia, that’s it kind of first name unique to it as our first names are to us, as opposed to the family name used by many others also. China is People’s Republic of China, they add another word. Now Mongolia & Montenegro both just use the one word as their official name. Whereas Algeria gets a little wordy as The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria. And we call it Algeria. There are Unions, Commonwealths, Kingdoms and Plurinational State of Bolivia.
But we always just use the one word name.
Now let’s look at the Americas; Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Guatemala are in North, Central and South America, with many others and we call them by those main names, not United Mexican States or Federated Republic of Brazil. And that’s how we all do it worldwide and everyone’s happy.
Now, out of all the countries of the Americas only one uses the name America as its first name, United States of America. That is its first name just like everyone else having a first name. The United and States are the official stuff no one cares about like Republic and Kingdom.
So referring to USA as America is exactly the same as referring to United Mexican States as Mexico. It’s just the shortened version to our first name like everyone else. It would be weird to not call it America.
And of course we call the people based on that main first name: Bolivians, Mexicans, French, Croatians, Chinese, Singaporeans.
The fact that America also happens to reside in the Americas and the Continent of North America has nothing to do with our first name being America. It is not being insensitive to anyone to refer to us as America, nobody anywhere refers to a country by the continent name they reside in. And it’s just a rare or unique fluke that our first name is the same as our continent name. I wonder if there are other countries with that same fluke? Google says it’s true of Australia. And South Africa is close.
This really should close that whole discussion for good, but of course your article goes to far different places this little comment doesn’t address. I don’t mind you rallying resistance against Trump but with this perspective maybe there are better ways. Trump’s insensitivities are one thing, calling my country America and its people Americans is the standard global word practice given to all countries and not insensitive.
That's certainly a strong reason why things are as they are, but I'll point out that we don't *quite* always use the short name:
- The United Arab Emirates, whose people are the "Emiratis", not "Arabs"
- The United Kingdom is a more common phrase than "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (though maybe not more than Great Britain? But that excludes northern Ireland. (In general the UK is also quite a mess regarding toponymy. )
- The Dominican Republic ("Dominica" is a different couttry)
- The Czech Republic (still more commonly used than "Czechia")
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo
- The Central African Republic (we don't say "Central Africa")
- Historical examples like the USSR, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.
One could additionally argue that the "America" in "United States of America" was not initially meant to describe the country, but its location: the united states that are located in America, which in the 1770s would have been unambiguous because every other territory in America was a colony (or unclaimed territory I guess). It looks like the usage of "America" as the short name for the US became common only much later, in the 1890s, perhaps not coincidentally when the US was rising as a significant world power.
On the other hand, George Washington was already using "American" in the 1790s to promote the idea that the inhabitants of the new country were one people rather than Virginians, Georgians, New Yorkers etc., and in opposition to Europeans.
Anyway, all of this is (mostly) in jest! It's just interesting to note that "America First"-type policies stand on a more flimsy etymological ground than common usage might suggest.
Yes, I appreciate the in jest mention, but I've run into a lot of my activist cohorts that get seriously worked up about it. But I'm glad you brought it up so I could get this viewpoint out there.
The list of outliers that don't use the shortened version supports my point...if USA didn't have America in the official name, but then decided to use America as it's common short name, then that would be an asshole move. But just because these few outliers follow a different path means nothing compared to the whole.
The global standard is these structural words - Republic, Federation, States, etc. and then the name name, the first name identity thing. United and States are the structural part also shared by a good number of others. America is the name name...actually a dude's name, Amerigo Vespucci...so I guess we are Italian.
I once spent a summer in England and it was around the time Razorlight's single America was playing everywhere you went. I always just assumed America meant the United States, that seemed to be heavily implied in the song. But over time I noticed when English and even other Europeans say something happened in America or they know someone in America, it could just as well be referring to Cleveland or Buenos Aires. Never heard anyone call it 'the Americas,' in every day speech.
I think that *estadounidenses* is way too much of a mouthful, as well. We could fix that by just calling people "USAs." It rolls off the tongue easy regardless of your language---"ooh sahs."
Regrettably my suggestion to call Americans "Units" never caught on but perhaps with the shift to Trump people will warm up to it. ;-)
This post really captures the complexity behind Trump’s provocative ideas, especially when it comes to the use of "America." It's a nuanced discussion of identity, power, and the historical context that many of us don't often consider in day-to-day conversations.
The notion that the U.S. has "earned" the right to call itself America is hard to argue with, after all, it's the beacon of freedom and influence in many ways. But as this post suggests, with that power comes a responsibility to represent those ideals thoughtfully and respectfully. Trump's actions seem to be stirring up division rather than promoting unity, which makes the conversation around "America" all the more interesting.
There's a similar thing about adjective Russian, which in English used to refer to the whole land of Russia, while in Russian language itself, there are two adjectives "russkiy" = "of Russian ethnicity / language" and "rossianin" - "of Russian Federation", which is a country that apparetly has many other ethnicities who when referred to as "ruski" might be offended. In English, however, they don't have a distinct adjective. I believe many misunderstandings of Russia from the "West" come from not drawing that distinction. So, I do very much support the usage of Unitedstatesian haha, at least with ironic connotation, which might be enough just to remind about the actual geography.
Interesting! I only vaguely knew about this. I guess things were clearer, maybe, during Soviet times?
Perhaps, everyone's "Soviet", etc. Still imperialistic and suppressive to individual nation's identities, just under new ideology, maybe even more than during the Russian Empire (e.g. Soviets standartised language, alphabet, etc.) but at least not using a name of one nation as an umbrella term.
Also, remember that kids in the US learn that "Colombus discovered America." You would expect he put his feet on the US, but no; he never did it. He only reached Bahamas, Cuba etc. Historically, the Americas were one single continent: America. If America, otherwise, is the country, kids should stop learning that Colombus discovered America; it's fake news.
Huh yeah that's a good point, I never realized this could be a confusion!
As a Brazilian… well you already know, I’ve been calling them united statians for ever
I think the world at large is destabilizing. It could be useful to have such a volatile leader in office over the next 4 years. The US hegemony is fading and there is an extremely high likelihood of China attempting to seize global dominance in 2027-2028. In fact, his whole point in trolling these small countries is simply to counter growing Chinese influence in these regions. It is easy to paint him as the bad guy but in reality he is the lesser of two global evils. I don’t like him as a person, but I think he is better prepared to lead the US into a likely WWIII conflict in the next few years than Kamala for certain.
I am sympathetic to this argument and considered it when the election was ongoing. Sometimes having a chaotic leader who will shake up things can indeed be beneficial, especially when the "system" has become entrenched in a suboptimal way.
I don't really buy the idea that 2024-2025 is a time that calls for it, though, considering just how well the United States has been going (economically, technologically, culturally etc.) since the pandemic compared to basically all other countries.
Well China has definitely started to play their hand more blatantly, I think it would be dumb to ignore them as a genuine threat much longer.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump is a total asshat. But I would rather a strong-handed arrogant jackass to lead us into WWIII than a fence-sitting, blows-with-the-wind, chameleon of a politician. I think he’s mostly just inflaming the media with his words right now, which is one of the things he does best.
Time flies by on the global stage. We have to start positioning ourselves better for a potential conflict. Tariffs will likely burden our economy but force American manufacturing to be revived which will be crucial in any global conflict (likely with drone warfare). Then we have the AGI conversation, which is a whole other can of worms. The world is on the brink of immense change.
IMO the discussion of the USA trying to hold claim to the name “America” is a total nonissue. I for one will still call it the Gulf of Mexico, just like I still call X, Twitter. It’s a poor attempt at rebranding by egomaniacs. But we should not let that distract us from the real issues.
"Well China has definitely started to play their hand more blatantly, I think it would be dumb to ignore them as a genuine threat much longer."
Did the Biden administration ignore them, though? I'm very (very) far from being an expert on the subject, but Biden’s export controls plan to limit China's access to advanced chips were often presented as a very aggressive move. The push to ban TikTok also took place under his administration.
Additionally, people on Metaculus seem to believe that under a Democratic administration, the probability of the U.S. intervening in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be higher than under Trump. So, it’s not obvious to me that a Kamala Harris administration would have been particularly naive on China.
(And this is coming from someone who thinks quite a few of Trump’s recent executive orders were actually good — I’m far from a hater.)
I did some thinking about this naming issue some years ago (I am as liberal as liberal can be)…I wanted to be more sensitive to my friends in other countries of North and South America. But I realized a unique thing. Most countries of the whole world have a long official name and a shortened version using the main name within the longer one. So Croatia is Republic of Croatia, but we just call it Croatia, that’s it kind of first name unique to it as our first names are to us, as opposed to the family name used by many others also. China is People’s Republic of China, they add another word. Now Mongolia & Montenegro both just use the one word as their official name. Whereas Algeria gets a little wordy as The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria. And we call it Algeria. There are Unions, Commonwealths, Kingdoms and Plurinational State of Bolivia.
But we always just use the one word name.
Now let’s look at the Americas; Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Guatemala are in North, Central and South America, with many others and we call them by those main names, not United Mexican States or Federated Republic of Brazil. And that’s how we all do it worldwide and everyone’s happy.
Now, out of all the countries of the Americas only one uses the name America as its first name, United States of America. That is its first name just like everyone else having a first name. The United and States are the official stuff no one cares about like Republic and Kingdom.
So referring to USA as America is exactly the same as referring to United Mexican States as Mexico. It’s just the shortened version to our first name like everyone else. It would be weird to not call it America.
And of course we call the people based on that main first name: Bolivians, Mexicans, French, Croatians, Chinese, Singaporeans.
The fact that America also happens to reside in the Americas and the Continent of North America has nothing to do with our first name being America. It is not being insensitive to anyone to refer to us as America, nobody anywhere refers to a country by the continent name they reside in. And it’s just a rare or unique fluke that our first name is the same as our continent name. I wonder if there are other countries with that same fluke? Google says it’s true of Australia. And South Africa is close.
This really should close that whole discussion for good, but of course your article goes to far different places this little comment doesn’t address. I don’t mind you rallying resistance against Trump but with this perspective maybe there are better ways. Trump’s insensitivities are one thing, calling my country America and its people Americans is the standard global word practice given to all countries and not insensitive.
That's certainly a strong reason why things are as they are, but I'll point out that we don't *quite* always use the short name:
- The United Arab Emirates, whose people are the "Emiratis", not "Arabs"
- The United Kingdom is a more common phrase than "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (though maybe not more than Great Britain? But that excludes northern Ireland. (In general the UK is also quite a mess regarding toponymy. )
- The Dominican Republic ("Dominica" is a different couttry)
- The Czech Republic (still more commonly used than "Czechia")
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo
- The Central African Republic (we don't say "Central Africa")
- Historical examples like the USSR, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.
One could additionally argue that the "America" in "United States of America" was not initially meant to describe the country, but its location: the united states that are located in America, which in the 1770s would have been unambiguous because every other territory in America was a colony (or unclaimed territory I guess). It looks like the usage of "America" as the short name for the US became common only much later, in the 1890s, perhaps not coincidentally when the US was rising as a significant world power.
On the other hand, George Washington was already using "American" in the 1790s to promote the idea that the inhabitants of the new country were one people rather than Virginians, Georgians, New Yorkers etc., and in opposition to Europeans.
Anyway, all of this is (mostly) in jest! It's just interesting to note that "America First"-type policies stand on a more flimsy etymological ground than common usage might suggest.
Yes, I appreciate the in jest mention, but I've run into a lot of my activist cohorts that get seriously worked up about it. But I'm glad you brought it up so I could get this viewpoint out there.
The list of outliers that don't use the shortened version supports my point...if USA didn't have America in the official name, but then decided to use America as it's common short name, then that would be an asshole move. But just because these few outliers follow a different path means nothing compared to the whole.
The global standard is these structural words - Republic, Federation, States, etc. and then the name name, the first name identity thing. United and States are the structural part also shared by a good number of others. America is the name name...actually a dude's name, Amerigo Vespucci...so I guess we are Italian.
I once spent a summer in England and it was around the time Razorlight's single America was playing everywhere you went. I always just assumed America meant the United States, that seemed to be heavily implied in the song. But over time I noticed when English and even other Europeans say something happened in America or they know someone in America, it could just as well be referring to Cleveland or Buenos Aires. Never heard anyone call it 'the Americas,' in every day speech.
I think that *estadounidenses* is way too much of a mouthful, as well. We could fix that by just calling people "USAs." It rolls off the tongue easy regardless of your language---"ooh sahs."
Regrettably my suggestion to call Americans "Units" never caught on but perhaps with the shift to Trump people will warm up to it. ;-)
Lol "units", that's so... clinical. It's absurd but I kind of like it :p
Someone else suggested "usonian", which was apparently coined by Frank Lloyd Wright, and sounds somewhat cool.
This post really captures the complexity behind Trump’s provocative ideas, especially when it comes to the use of "America." It's a nuanced discussion of identity, power, and the historical context that many of us don't often consider in day-to-day conversations.
The notion that the U.S. has "earned" the right to call itself America is hard to argue with, after all, it's the beacon of freedom and influence in many ways. But as this post suggests, with that power comes a responsibility to represent those ideals thoughtfully and respectfully. Trump's actions seem to be stirring up division rather than promoting unity, which makes the conversation around "America" all the more interesting.
¡Vale!