No Stupid Questions

'Murican 🇺🇸🍔🍺🏈🗽

There's not a clear and conscience alternative to "American." If you're trying to differentiate us from other people from the Americas you'd just say US Citizen. And while yes the entirety of this hemisphere is some variation of America be it North, Central, or South the other countries here have distinct names and we really don't.

At the risk of sounding like a typical US asshole, here goes nothing. This is how I've explained it to friends from Europe and it seemed to help.

If Brazil had decided to go by the name "United States of Brazil" we would still call them Brazilians because there is another country with the title "United States" that also exists. Similar to how we call people from the Peoples Republic of China, Chinese. We don't call them "People's Republicans" because that's a title not a unique identifier or name. What if that same country decided to go by the name the Peoples Republic of Asia instead, would we call them Peoples Republicans or would we call them Asians?

The title "United States" is telling you that this area is united together and the borders represent states, not country's. "America" tells you where those united states are, the continent of America. The term "American" is generalized and honestly doesn't accurately represent the vast cultural differences within the United States. The states often have their own rights and laws separate from the US government and also unique cultures. Ideally we would be called by our states name for its citizens like Californian or New Yorker, for example. Similar to how you would refer to people from Europe as European unless you wanted to be specific to Italy, then you'd say Italian. But sometimes you need a general term, hence "American."

All that being said, it is problematic and a massive reminder of this country's bloodthirsty and genocidal colonization of a large part of North America. Looking at the country's past shows that they were very much trying to also get central and south America as part of the United States. What better way to propagandize and make it look like they had every right to the rest of the Americas than to make it appear as though this country or that country already was America and therefore should be part of these United States? But however problematic it is this is the name we have now, for better or worse.

As an addendum of sorts. We Indigenous Americans would often much rather be called by the names of our sovereign Nations yet everyone calls us Native American. Why is that? Food for thought that might help with understanding the problematic struggle we have here. It's not simply us as citizens that perpetuate the issue, it's a global colonization effort whether the others realize they are participating or not. (Spoiler: they realize)

tldr: because colonization + United States is a title not a name

In Australia we call them cunts.

I knew one that was called "Doug". I'm not sure how much of a generalisation one can make from that though, but it seemed to work for him.

"American" is the official name, though throughout history attempts have been made to find alternatives. You can read more on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonyms_for_the_United_States

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.[18] Another alternative is US-American,[19] also spelled US American.

Several single-word English alternatives for American have been suggested over time, especially Usonian, popularized by architect Frank Lloyd Wright,[20] and the nonce term United-Statesian.[21]

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, and United Stater.[22] Names for broader categories include terms such as Western Hemispherian, New Worlder, and North Atlantican.[23][24][25]

Nevertheless, no alternative to "American" is common in English.[18]

The proper term is American.

everybody born in the american continent is technically “american” too

The implied context of your question is in English.. In the English-speaking world, there is no American continent. People from North America are North Americans; people from South America are South Americans. People from the United States of America are American. There is no ambiguity. There is also no good term to collectively describe everyone from the Americas but there’s also rarely any need to discuss that.

I consider terms such as “USonian” and whatnot to be highly offensive. Nobody should tell a people what they are allowed to call themselves in their own language just because the same word means something else in another language. It would be like telling French people they’re not allowed to call their arm a bras because it refers to an article of clothing in English. Other languages where America means something else already have their own terms for people from the US. English, however, has no real ambiguity except that caused by those trying to shame Americans for calling themselves Americans.

Yankee, or Yank.

Only one country on those countries has the word "America" in its name.

It's commonly understood by all but the most pedantic that "americans" refers exclusively to inhabitants of the USA.

North and South America are so big and diverse that there's really no usage for the term "American" being used to refer to everyone on both continents. US just took the term for themselves and no one really cared enough to complain

Estadounidenses

Language rules (in English at least) are descriptive not prescriptive. They try to explain why Americans are called Americans, not determine what they're called. They're called Americans, whether or not it's logical, or the ideal descriptor, or fits with other names, that's what they're called.

Also most English speaking countries don't have an "American" continent, they have North and South America as separate continents, so you would say someone is North or South American to refer to the continent, not just American. Similar to how some people consider Eurasia a single continent but very few people would identify as Eurasian.

A US Citizen.

A “US-American” if you need to be very clear. But most people just say “American”.

To add a bit of context, it isn't arrogance or something that drives us to use "American" as a demonym, it's just the linguistic norm. I don't find any of the other names offensive (except seppo, but that one is meant to offend me), but most of us would probably do a double take at the term "USican" or "USian." Virtually all of us would accept Yankee.

Further reading: the full name of Mexico is the United Mexican States. If we wanted to be pedantic, we could say that using the reference to the US would be ambiguous, as they too are technically a US.

I like to call them Muricans. Sure, it may sound super similar to "Americans", but it's different enough to sorta make things clearer.

I'm joking. This idea is horrible.

The simple answer is really, no. Colloquially if you say "American" you're talking about someone from the USA. We'll further segregate ourselves into the States we're from, which isn't that different a distinction between "European" and "German".

obese.

Yank

"From the United States"

I usually respond to "Hey stupid", maybe try that?

Don't actually try this.

On a phone, or by yelling.

In french you can say états-unien and you might translate it as States-nan

In Germany we call them "US-Amerikaner".

The sovereign people of any nation have a right to call themselves what they please. People of the US decided on 'American' long before the Internet was a thing and Latin America people got pissed off. US intervention in Latin America is a stain in history, but this is categorically dumb. US citizens call themselves Americans because it's in the name. Literally. Canadians don't call themselves Americans and never will. This is dumb argument. Respectfully.

United Statesman

Gringo or gabacho.

Honestly, Yankee is probably the best. Some southerners won’t like it, and westerners will probably be confused, but we all know it means American and it’s the only real term for one of us that doesn’t lend the question “and why do we call you this and not people from the United States of Mexico this”. Our country’s name is unfortunately extremely generic.

US-Amerikaner

US-Americans

Gringos

Judging from playing video games in EU lobbies, "Hamburger"?

It's always been funny to me when latin Americans get pissy at the term American being used to describe the country who's president is Biden ( said with love as mx) . They always try to correct Americans to "estados unidenses" United Statean. Which in my opinion doesn't work for 3 reasons. First name recognition most of the world associate Americans with 'merica. 2nd it's a difficult set of words for Anglo speakers especially vs Americano. Thirdly there are actually 2 countries thats proper name include "United States" those are united states of American and United States of Mexico, who colloquially are known as America and Mexico respectively.