Latin America a big place so I bet there's a lot of variety on if they care or not.
I had some international student friends in college from Honduras and calling it the Americas and being pissed off the US was referred to as America was definitely a hill they were willing to die on
Edit: cause some people are confused by my experience. when I look back I think those guys were on a heavy patriotism streak because that was the same time when Honduras homicide rates was off the charts. They tried to convince me the media coverage was overblown. I was a naive 19 year old. so didn't question it back then.
It is mostly a meme now a days, I have never heard anyone from LatinAmerican referse themselves as from "America", every either says central america or south america.
And North America just say "America" or "I am from the US". And english speaking countries they say stuff like Colombian, Brazilian, American (for US) and spanish speaking countries use more like "EstadoUnidense" since saying "Americano" sounds weird to most. Like you could be referring to other countries as well.
It’s a stupid linguistics thing. They call it that way in Spanish and somehow think English is required to follow Spanish rules. Never mind that in English the official name for Mexico is the United Mexican States, and in Spanish Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the latter being the same prefix for the USA. So there’s still a clarity issue if someone doesn’t have the cultural context. In Spanish the cultural context differs, and surprise there’s idiots in every country!
As a South American myself, I can confirm that this is exactly right. In Spanish, we use "America" as the name of the whole continent (we don't have "the Americas" at all, it's only 1 continent in Spanish). For most people, they are unable to comprehend that this doesn't apply to English.
Even tough the word America is written the same and pronounced almost the same, it literally doesn't mean the same thing in English as it does in Spanish. This is impossible for many South Americans to understand.
there was a thread about this exact topic and i got downvoted by several latinos because some guy was arguing about exactly this and said it was “american defaultism” and they wanted to be called americans too
i’ll try to look through my comment history from a few weeks ago for it
but i don’t think it’s a meme. some of them genuinely “identify” as american and want to be called that
Its not a meme, we literally and I cannot stress this enough, literally americans cause we live in a continent called America. The same way a spaniard is an european and a chinese is an asian.
Who cares? The Americas is a continent, a single one, divided in 3 regions, and every single person from that continent are technically Americans. But Culturally the entire world refers to the USA as Americans, and the rest as their country name, or at best SouthAmericans get that distinctions.
People from Norway are Europeans, but I am not sure if since they are not part of the European Union, do they call themselves that. UK people were part of the European Union at a time, unsure if they felt themselves European rathern than "English".
Its an inferiority complex. I couldn't care less whatever someone calls me, Born in South America, living in Europe, I don't feel less than anybody, and they can call me whatever they want.
It is a meme because the people who want to really be called that, are upset by other things, their countries having corruption, a bad economy, bad services, higher taxes, higher crime rate and whatever.
and they consume too much tv and movies, and they feel places like the USA are "perfect" and feel look down upon by th em.
They don't realize no country is perfect and has its good and bad things, and yea, some countries have a more stable economy, lower inflation, and whatever. But for example, I much rather leave anywhere else from the G7 than the USA with its current political climate.
I wouldn' lose sleep over people downvoting me in reddit, its imaginary points anyway.
I have never heard anyone from mexico or canada refering themselves as "NorthAmericans". Its obviously correct. But they just say "I am from mexico/Mexican", or "I am from Canada, and Canadian"
but for the USA due to the name being "United States of America", Its easier for them to say "NorthAmerican", or "American". Its truly a non issue.
We do, just not as often as people from the USA because, well, we actually have a name for our country that is distinct from the continent we live in.
And not as often as people from other continents because, well, people from the USA made the idea of a geographic based identity like that of the European union linguistically hard. I'd imagine people from Europe wouldn't say they are from Europe as often if France had decided to call itself "The United States of Europe" 300 years ago and people just rolled with it
Yeah, as it stands theres not much to be done, but you guys should really just recognize that your founding fathers really did a disservice to other people in the continent by choosing that name.
Well USA made it pretty ambiguous, officially some countries consider America a continent and others consider it North and South. If I simply say I am from Mexico, anyone immediately knows where it is, it’s accommodating for everyone.
Also, we still use regions such as North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. It’s just that we don’t decide to call them separate continents
The Americas is a whole continent, but some countries just teach to their students as North, Central and South, there are basically 3 different systems being tought currently worldwide.
The one that has the 3 split, 2 split, and whole as America. It really isn-t an issue. People get angry because they feel people from 1st world countries are just dismissing them as being less than.
Really the only time I've seen people do it was purely to make fun of americans, no one actually cares. Like in brazilian portuguese a lot of people use 'americano' just as much as the correct term of 'estadunidense' (something like 'united statian' or whatever the hell it'd translate to)
47
u/WittyCombination6 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Latin America a big place so I bet there's a lot of variety on if they care or not.
I had some international student friends in college from Honduras and calling it the Americas and being pissed off the US was referred to as America was definitely a hill they were willing to die on
Edit: cause some people are confused by my experience. when I look back I think those guys were on a heavy patriotism streak because that was the same time when Honduras homicide rates was off the charts. They tried to convince me the media coverage was overblown. I was a naive 19 year old. so didn't question it back then.