“American” is the official English word when referring to people or things from the United States, but it heavily implies that it means either all of North America or all of North and South Americas. Most other languages have different words for American (country) and American (continents). If there were a campaign to replace the word “America” with something else when referring to the US, what would you think of it?
I see people getting het up about this every now and then, but I think it’s a manufactured concern. This isn’t, like, who gets to call themselves real Macedonia, it isn’t a piece of real heritage or tradition, it’s a single Italian guy’s name that got slapped on nearly an entire hemisphere. “The Americas” were never a coherent thing before colonialism made them that as the Other. Respecting actual regional and cultural identity is important, and Amerigo Vespucci and his adjectival formation is just… not relevant to that actual concern.
I find it interesting that IME it’s Europeans who mostly seem to bring up the name overlap as a problem? Which I guess is from the impression you get of names and borders when your national names and borders weren’t, like, drawn on maps in straight lines by the East India Trading Co.
The best part of the overlap though is that if you are thinking of ⚽ and “America”, that’s 🇲🇽 Mexico 🇲🇽 all the way baby!! As it should be
basically my take is “colonizer names are giant stupid graffiti on what was here before, let’s not pretend they’re sacred”
This is a good point. In fact, the whole concept of continents is a social construct with very European roots. They’re not based in Geography or the tectonic plate system despite what is often (wrongly) taught. They’re not based on culture either. Central America (North America) has a lot more in common with South America than with the US and Canada. In fact, culture is like a fractal where you can subdivide forever.
Thats what the term Latin America is for.
should the adjective also be applied to the continents? sure absolutely. but I sort of think it’s in a linguistic free for all since the name really doesn’t connect to something of deep significance. anybody on any of these continents has about the same claim to it in my book.
Another thing is that looking at the level of continents takes away from the nuances of situations. For example: CGP Grey talked about how most native peoples located in where the US is now actually prefer the term Indian compared to Native American, because Native American is a blanket term for natives on both continents, and includes too many very diverse and different groups to really be relevant to individual communities.
Same with Europeans, where you have significant differences between Western, Central, Eastern, and Nordic Europeans. Asians and Africans too, and to an even greater extent.
honestly the more I think about it the more referring to “the americas” just feels… rude? as if the Inuit and Guarani people and everybody in between get lumped into a bucket just because that was what seemed convenient to some dead Europeans from five hundred years back
I’m now gonna go to sleep pondering the division of “Europe” and its political constitution
I think you are missing the point. This is something that really bothers many people in Latin America, because it equates one small country with the whole continent. And its the country that has caused a lot of suffering in Latin America in the last century.