American (word) Totally Explained

Use of the word American in the English language differs between historical, geographical and political contexts. It derives from America, a term originally referring to all of the New World (also called the Americas), and its usage has evolved over time.
The word can be used as both a noun and an adjective. In adjectival use, it's generally understood to mean "of or relating to the United States of America"; for example, "Elvis Presley was an American singer" or "the American president gave a speech today;" in noun form, it generally means U.S. citizen or national. When used with a grammatical qualifier the adjective American can mean "of or relating to the Americas," as in Latin American or Indigenous American. Less frequently, the adjective can take this meaning without a qualifier, even when used in the United States, as in "American Spanish dialects and pronunciation differ by country," or "The ancient American civilizations of the pre-Columbian period were advanced in mathematics and astronomy." A third use of the term pertains specifically to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, for instance, "In the 15th century, many Americans died from European diseases during the Spanish Conquest". French, German, and Italian speakers may use cognates of the word "American" to refer specifically to United States citizens, as in English, or to the New World, as in Spanish. In Spanish, americano often refers to the entire New World; the adjective and noun describing the United States is estadounidense, deriving from Estados Unidos de América, the United States of America. Also, the terms estadounidense, norteamericano and gringo are popularly used in some Central American and South American countries to describe the people of the United States. The differences in usage of the cognates cause some cultural friction between U.S. nationals and Latin Americans; Latin Americans, in particular, may object to the primary English usage of American, feeling it unfairly appropriates the term.

History of the word

Various theories exist for the derivation of the word America. The most commonly expounded theory is that German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller derived it from the Latinized version of the name of Amerigo Vespucci (Americus Vespucius), an Italian merchant and cartographer whose exploratory journeys in the early 1500s brought him to the eastern coastline of South America and to the Caribbean. Some of Vespucci's letters were published, and they were the basis of Waldseemüller's 1507 map, which was the first to use the word America. (See ) In 1886, Jules Marcou states that Vespucci changed his Christian name of Alberigo Vespucci (Albericus Vespucius) to Amerigo Vespucci only after coming into contact with natives from the eponymous Amerrique ranges of Nicaragua, which connect North America to South America, an important geographical feature of New World maps and charts. The newest theory from 1908 suggests America derives from the name of one Richard Amerike of Bristol in England, financier of John Cabot's expedition in 1497. Cabot is believed to be the first Western European to set foot on the mainland. However it came into existence, the term American was subsequently used as an adjective describing the New World and its native people.
In the 16th century, the word American was used by Europeans for the indigenous inhabitants of the New World; soon it was extended to describe newly settled Europeans, namely Spaniards and their mixed progeny. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation proclaimed a new country, "The United States of America". The Articles of Confederation state the following above the signatories: "In Witness whereof we've hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done at Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Eight, and in the Third Year of the independence of America." Divergence in usage becomes evident because only the word America, not the United States, is used in this section. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison employ two different meanings for American in the Federalist Papers. For example, Madison and Hamilton write of "the American republic" in Federalist Paper 51 and 70 respectively. In contrast, Hamilton uses American to describe land outside the political borders of the United States of America in Federalist Paper 24

Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security. On one side of us, and stretching far into our rear, are growing settlements subject to the dominion of Britain. On the other side, and extending to meet the British settlements, are colonies and establishments subject to the dominion of Spain. This situation and the vicinity of the West India Islands, belonging to these two powers create between them, in respect to their American possessions and in relation to us, a common interest.

In 1796, during George Washington's Farewell address, the president is quoted as saying "The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation."
   Some proposals for a different name for the country were made prior to the Constitutional Convention, with the most popular name being "Columbia". The problems with the name "the United States of America" (its length, awkwardness, vague and imprecise meaning) were known and discussed at the time, but the Constitution didn't address the topic, using both "the United States of America" and "the United States" interchangeably.
   In contrast, the word "Colombia" comes from the name of Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón in Spanish, Cristoforo Colombo in Italian). It was conceived by the revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to the New World, especially to all American territories and colonies under Spanish and Portuguese rule, and which eventually led to the short-lived United States of Colombia to distinguish it from the United States of America.
   Peculiar inconsistencies are evident in official documents shortly after the United States became a sovereign nation. The 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France uses the term "the United States of North America" in the first sentence, but subsequently uses just "the said United States". Both "the United States of America" and "the United States of North America" came from the earlier terms "the United Colonies of America" and "the United Colonies of North America".
   The Treaty of Peace and Amity, Signed at Algiers September 5, 1795, is an agreement with "the United States of North America" which uses both "citizens of the United States" and "American Citizens" in the document.
   Semantic divergence in the Anglophone world wouldn't affect the Spanish colonies. In 1801, a document titled "Letter to American Spaniards" is believed to have directly influenced the Act of Independence and the 1811 Constitution of Venezuela. This document was published in French, Spanish, and English in 1799, 1801 and 1808, respectively.
   The LDS Articles of Faith make reference to the American continent as the place where Zion is to be built (External Link

).
The Old Catholic Encyclopedia refers to America as "the Western Continent or the New World". It discusses a wide variety of American republics ranging from the United States of America to the "the republic of Mexico, the Central American republics of Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Leon, and Panama; the Antillian republics of Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Cuba, and the South American republics of Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, the Argentine, and Chile." (External Link

).
Since the late 18th century American has been used in both the historical continental sense, and to refer to the United States of America. Though the English and Spanish cognates have multiple, nearly identical meanings today, the common unqualified form in the respective language often differs.

Disagreement over meaning

The use of American as a national demonym for U.S. citizens has been frequently challenged primarily by Latin Americans.

Political-cultural views

Latin America

Latin Americans consider everyone in the Americas to be americanos. Use of the word to refer specifically to U.S. citizens may be seen as ignorant, arrogant, incorrect, or even self-serving depending on the context. The same sentiments may apply to the use of the word American in English. The Luxury Link travel guide advises U.S. nationals traveling in Mexico to avoid referring to themselves as Americans, as Mexicans consider themselves Americans. The Getting Through Customs website advises business travelers not to use "in America" as a reference to the United States when doing business in Brazil.
In Latin America, the slippage between the word American as a relation to the landmass of the Western Hemisphere and American exclusively to refer to U.S. nationals is seen as beneficial to the advances of United States foreign policy in Latin America; namely American exceptionalism or a diplomatic renewal of the Monroe Doctrine depending on contemporary political interests. Also, in American Spanish, the word estadounidense is used to describe U.S. nationals, and the use of the word American to refer to only U.S. nationals is seen as culturally aggressive and imperialistic in nature.

Spain

In Spain, people who have lived in the Western Hemisphere but now live in Spain may be called americanos. The Diccionario de la Lengua Española (Dictionary of the Spanish Language) published by the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), also gives estadounidense (United Stater) as one of the definitions of americano, meaning "someone from the United States or relating to the United States". However, most Spaniards, being influenced by the European media, still call U.S nationals "Americans"".

Canada

Prior to Confederation in 1867, the word "Canadian" referred only to residents of the colony of Canada, which consisted of the territory of modern Quebec and Ontario. The term didn't apply to residents of the colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland. Collectively, the British colonies were known as British North America and their residents referred to themselves as "British Americans." Only after 1867 did the term "Canadian" come to describe all the residents of the Dominion of Canada and the word "American" come to be seen a semi-pejorative.
In Canada, their southern neighbour is seldom referred to as "America", with "the United States", "the U.S.", or (informally) "the States" used instead, although "American" is the usual demonym in modern Canadian English. Modern Canadians rarely apply the term American to themselves — some Canadians resent being referred to as Americans because of mistaken assumptions that they're U.S. citizens or an inability—particularly of people overseas—to distinguish Canadian English and American English accents. When Canadians need to refer to the larger continental context, North American (or North and South American), not "American", is the term in current usage.
People of U.S. ethnic origin in Canada are categorized as "American (U.S.)" by Statistics Canada for purposes of census counts. (External Link

) In Quebec French, one will occasionally see the term étatsunisien ("Unitedstatesian", analogous to the Spanish estadounidense) used in place of the more common "américain."

Portugal and Brazil

Americano is generally used to refer to United States citizens only. Currently in Portugal Brazilians are always called brasileiros and never americanos, although the common usage was different in the 19th century.
However, the usage of americano in specific reference to the United States isn't recommended by the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (Lisbon Science Academy, which regulates language use) because the word estado-unidense (estadunidense, alternative spelling) clearly identifies a United Stater.
Brazilians refer to themselves as "americanos" in general and "latino-americanos" in particular. However the word "América" has in the past 15 years become more popular as synonymous with "United States of America" in big urban centers more influenced by United States culture, especially after the Brazilian immigration boom to US in mid-1990s. In many parts of the country "norte-americano" usually refers to someone from the United States, while "América" is still used to refer to the Americas.

United States

The United States Census Bureau considers 7.3% of the residents of the United States to be of "United States or American" ancestry (External Link

) based on responses to the 2000 Census long form questionnaire (1 in 6 sample). Most of these were in the Bureau's South Region (see map at right), which has a high percentage of people who trace their ancestry to the colonial origins of the United States but often lack records of the specific countries of their ancestors' origins. Responses of United States or American alone, or with an ambiguous response or state name (excluding Hawai'i) were aggregated as "United States or American" for most purposes. Distinct groups such as "American Indian", "Mexican American", "African American", and "Hawaiian" were coded separately because of overlap with the short form questionnaire data (which covers the entire population) on race and Hispanic/Latino ethnicity.
Usage of the word can vary in diplomatic situations. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is quoted as saying, "…todos somos americanos" during a speech in Honduras. His quotation is translated as "We are all Americans" by the Washington Post and CNN.
There is also some dispute about the meaning of American in the Monroe Doctrine to this day.

American in other contexts

The Associated Press Stylebook (1994) defines American as "An acceptable description for a resident of the United States. It also may be applied to any resident or citizen of nations in North or South America." It also advises that United States should "be spelled out when used as a noun. Use U.S. (no space) only as an adjective."
In the entry for America, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (1999) says that the "terms America, American(s) and Americas refer not only to the United States, but to all of North America and South America. They may be used in any of their senses, including references to just the United States, if the context is clear. The countries of the Western Hemisphere are collectively the Americas."

American in international law

In legal circles a citizen of the United States is usually referred to as a U.S. citizen, not an American citizen, though the latter term is common in popular usage. The following excerpt is from the North American Free Trade Agreement:

Only air carriers that are U.S. citizens are permitted to operate domestic air services or operate international air services as a "U.S." carrier; non-U.S. citizens may own and control foreign air carriers that operate between the U.S. and foreign points.

American in U.S. law, generally

In the 6th Edition of Black's Law Dictionary, American is defined as "Of or pertaining to the United States." In the two newer editions of the same dictionary there's no entry for American.

American in U.S. marketplace regulation

Products labeled, advertised, or marketed in the U.S. as "American Made" must be "all or virtually all made in the U.S." The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in order to prevent deception and unfair competition, considers an unqualified "American Made" claim to be an express claim of U.S. manufacture. "The FTC Act gives the Commission the power to bring law enforcement actions against false or misleading claims that a product is of U.S. origin."

U.S. national in other languages

English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, popular Portuguese and Russian speakers may use American (Japanese: アメリカ人 roma-ji: amerika-jin), (Mandarin Chinese: pinyin- měiguórén, traditional- 美國人, simplified- 美国人) to refer to U.S. citizens. These languages generally have other terms for U.S. nationals; for example, there's US-Amerikaner in German, étatsunien in French, or statunitense in Italian.
   In Spanish, estadounidense, estado-unidense or estadunidense are preferred to americano for U.S. nationals; the latter tends to refer to any resident of the Americas and not necessarily from the United States; English spoken in Latin America often makes this distinction as well. In Portuguese, estado-unidense is the recommended form by language regulators but today it's less frequently used than americano, which has replaced the popular (and incorrect) norte-americano usage.
   Latin Americans also may employ the term norteamericano (North American), which itself conflates the United States and Canada. However, this term may also refer to anyone from the North American continent, which also includes Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
   Worldwide, speakers of Esperanto refer to the United States of America with the term "Usono", which is borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright's word Usonia. (Others suggest that it's derived from the initials for "Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Nordameriko" -- UŜN, pronounced as "oo-SHO-no".) Thus a citizen or national of the United States is referred to as an "usonano". The Esperantist terms for North Americans and for South Americans, by continent rather than country, are Nordamerikano and Sudamerikano, respectively.
   Adjectives derived from "United States" (such as United Statian) appear awkward in English, but similar constructions exist in Spanish (estadounidense or estadinense), Portuguese (estado-unidense, estadunidense) and Finnish (yhdysvaltalainen: from Yhdysvallat, United States); and also in French (états-unien) and Italian (statunitense).
   The word Gringo is widely used in parts of Latin America in reference to U.S. residents, often in a pejorative way but not necessarily. Yanqui (Yankee) is also very common in some regions. In Argentina, Uruguay and some regions of Brazil, the word Gringo is also used for any foreigner, not just for U.S. Citizens.
   With the 1994 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the following words were used to label the United States Section of that organization: in French, étatsunien; in Spanish, estadounidense. In English the adjective used to indicate relation to the United States is U.S.

Alternative adjectives for U.S. citizens

There are a number of alternatives to the demonym "American" (a citizen of the United States) that don't simultaneously mean any inhabitant of the Americas. One uncommon alternative is "Usonian," which usually describes a certain style of residential architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Over the years, many other alternatives have also surfaced, but most have long fallen into disuse and obscurity. Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says, "The list contains [inapproximate historical order from 1789 to 1939] such terms as Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Usian, Washingtonian, Usonian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican." Nevertheless, with the exception of "U.S." or "U.S. citizen", no alternative to "American" has been seriously considered.

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