According to Greg Grandin, author of the new book America, America, U.S. President Donald Trump “assumed that the name ‘America’ belongs solely to the United States.” That’s why he renamed the Gulf of Mexico, the “Gulf of America.”
In effect, citizens of the United States are the only ones called “Americans,” while others on the same continent are called according to their country of citizenship, like Argentineans, Colombians, Chileans, etc. Canadians, especially, don’t like to be called “Americans.”
In the Italian language, the word “statunitensi” is used to indicate citizens of the United States. In Spanish, the word “estadounidenses” means the same. But the English language doesn’t have a word other than “Americans.” (Although there is the rarely if ever used, “United-statesian.”)
The French have the term “etasunisien” to refer to denizens of the U.S., although the preferred words are “americain” (masculine) or “americaine” (feminine), and very colloquially, Germans write “die Amies,” which is a short form for “the Americans.” They use “die Amerikaner” when writing it out formally. In any case, in German, like in English, a capital “A” is used, while in other countries, the lower-case “a” or “s” indicates an American person.
So, it is understandable why Mexicans don’t want to refer to the gulf as “Gulf of America.” The Associated Press, a U.S. news agency, went to court and suffered a White House boycott because it insisted on continuing to refer to the gulf as the “Gulf of Mexico.”
After the 1776 Declaration of Independence from Britain, colonists began calling themselves “Americans.” While the term “American” was initially used to refer to the indigenous populations of the Americas, it gradually became associated with the inhabitants of the newly formed United States.
The term “American” became more widely adopted in official and popular usage in the late 18th century. The 1795 U.S. Treaty of Peace with Algiers refers to “American Citizens,” and President George Washington used the term in his 1796 farewell address.
Leave A Comment