Wally the K. wrote: "the people of the united states of america might have called themselves unionists or north americans just as well as they chose to call themselves americans. everybody born in the american continent is an american. uruguayans and peruvians are americans. guatemalans and chileans are americans. and so forth. i don't think that it is a matter of what you WANT to be called, but of what you in fact ARE. wallyK"
Well--Guatemalans, Peruvians, etc. are Americans in the sense that there are from a set of land masses called The Americas, but, as far as I know, the United States of America is the only country in the Western Hemisphere with the word "America" as a prominent part of its NAME. THAT is why we call ourselves "Americans." It has nothing to do, as someone else (forget who) has already stated quite eloquently, with how Americans perceive anyone else. While I'm on the subject, though, I've always thought that the Spanish-language solution for the perceived dilemma only made matters worse. In Spanish, the word for someone from the United States of America is "norteamericano/(a)"--leaving our Canadian and Mexican listers, I'm sure, to shake their heads in bewilderment and wonder, "What about me??" So a naming based on accurate geography, if that is the goal, *still* hasn't been achieved. While living in Spain and Chile, I always made it a point to say "estadounidense" whenever I could to express my nationality. However, that isn't nearly as widely accepted, and earned me some very strange looks. Mary, when all is said and done, An American.
