Different languages use different terms for citizens of the United States, the people known in English as Americans. All forms of English refer to these people as "Americans", derived from "The United States of America", but there is some linguistic ambiguity over this due to the other senses of the word American, which can also refer to people from the Americas in general. Many other languages use cognates of "American" to refer to people from the United States, but others, particularly Spanish, primarily use terms derived from "United States". There are various other local and colloquial names for Americans.
Development of the term
The adjective "American" originally referred to the landmass known as the Americas or America. "Americans" originally referred to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and later to European settlers and their descendants. English use of the term "American" for people of European descent dates to the 17th century; the earliest recorded appearance is in Thomas Gage's The English-American: A New Survey of the West Indies in 1648. "American" especially applied to people in British America, and thus its use as a demonym for the United States derives by extension.
The United States Declaration of Independence of 1776 refers to "the thirteen united States of America", making the first formal use of the country name; the name was officially adopted by the nation's first governing constitution, the Articles of Confederation, in 1777. The Federalist Papers of 1787-1788, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison to advocate the ratification of the United States Constitution, use the word "American" in both its original, Pan-American sense, but also in its United States sense: Federalist Paper 24 refers to the "American possessions" of Britain and Spain, i.e. land outside of the United States, while Federalist Papers 51 and 70 refer to the United States as "the American republic". People from the United States increasingly referred to themselves as "Americans" through the end of the 18th century; the 1795 Treaty of Peace and Amity with the Barbary States refers to "American Citizens", and George Washington spoke to his people of "[t]he name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity…" in his 1796 farewell address. Eventually, this usage spread through other English-speaking countries; the unqualified noun "American" now chiefly refers to natives or citizens of the United States in all forms of the English language. Although "American" may refer to all inhabitants of the continent, this is generally specified with a qualifier such as "Latin American" or "North American."
International use
International speakers of English refer to people from the United States as "Americans", while cognates of "American" are used in many other languages. French, German, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian speakers use cognates of American (Japanese: アメリカ人 roma-ji: amerika-jin), (Russian: американец, американка,) (Mandarin Chinese: pinyin- měiguórén, traditional- 美國人, simplified- 美国人) to refer to U.S. citizens. Spanish and Portuguese, however, chiefly use terms derived from Estados Unidos, the cognate of "United States" – estadounidense and estadunidense, respectively. The same linguistic ambiguity that occurs in English use of the term "American" occurs in the other European languages: to compensate for this, French (predominantly Quebec French) and Italian speakers may refer to U.S. citizens respectively as états-unien and statunitense, though this is less common, and German speakers may distinguish an Amerikaner as a U.S.-Amerikaner. This confusion is also present in Portuguese, as people from the United States may alternatively be referred to as americanos in that language. However, in Spanish, americano chiefly refers to all people from the Western Hemisphere, and using it in the United States sense may be considered offensive; the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas de la Real Academia Española advises against using it in this sense.
Alternate terms
The only officially and commonly used alternative for referring to the people of the United States in English is to refer to them as citizens of that country. "Yankee" (or "Yank") is a common colloquial term for Americans in English; cognates can be found in other languages. While "Yankee" may refer to people specifically from New England or the Northern United States, it has been applied to Americans generally since the 18th century, especially by the British. The earliest recorded use in this context is in a letter by Horatio Nelson in 1784. The word "gringo", often used pejoratively, is common in Spanish and has entered into other languages including English, in which language it is recorded as early as 1871. More generically, they may be specified as "U.S. Americans". Several single-word English alternatives for "American" have been suggested over time, including "Usonian", popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the nonce term "United-Statesian". The writer H. L. Mencken collected a number of proposals from between 1789 and 1939, finding terms including "Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Usian, Washingtonian, Usonian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican, United Stater." Nevertheless no alternative to "American" is common.
Spanish and Portuguese speakers may refer to people from the United States as norteamericanos and norte-americanos respectively ("North Americans"), though this term can also include Canadians and sometimes Mexicans. The fact that citizens of the United States call themselves "Americans" causes discomfort for many Latin Americans, who see it as an appropriation of the collective identity of all peoples and countries of the Western Hemisphere. However, this usage has historical roots. Other languages which optionally distinguish the two uses include Japanese, French, Finnish, Italian, and Navajo. Other languages, such as Chinese, Korean, Swahili, Vietnamese, and Esperanto, have different terms for U.S. citizens and people from the Americas.
Retrieved October 8, 2009.
See also:
Santos, Luis Claudio (March 2006). "American, United Statian, USAmerican, or Gringos?". AmeriQuests 2 (1).
