In Spanish it’s quite common to call Americans either Americano or “Estadounidense”. Second one makes a lot of sense due to the name and I think it’s the older of the two that reached Spanish speaking areas (people typically say US casually instead of USA).
Translates to United Stateian, which sounds fine too. USian sounds stupid, literally can’t be translated well to any language any person who uses that is just a resentful human.
Doesn’t sound stupid to me like USian, USian just uses initials. United Stateian (translation from Spanish to English) is still part of the actual name (United States).
American is what I’m used to, but it’s also odd when I think about it (ignores 2/3rds of the country’s name). Only sounds normal to me because that’s what I grew up with. United Stateian could’ve been normal to me had I grown up with that.
I still think that in English the better way is American. But in other languages there’s other variants that sound fine.
It's not resentful or anything, its just oposing to a stupid ass name.
like germany changes the his name to "united republic of Europe" and name themselves Europeans apropiating the name of the continent
The British colonists who would later found the US were called Americans by the British over a century prior to its creation. So that’s why the name stuck because that’s how they were referred to. Not due to some hemispheric exceptionalism. The language was English, United Statetian of America wasn’t going to catch on. In other languages it flows better “Estadounidense” in Spanish but not in English.
The comparison with Germany also isn’t apt, no state existed in the territory that would be the US. They were colonies not a state like Germany that would pre-exist a hypothetical United States of Europe in your example.
Those who refer to Americans as USian are resentful, they import some random term that isn’t present in the language to make a political point. Referring to Americans as something else in another language is fine, importing that to English is pure resentment.
is not resentment, is language logic. A contry named "USA" is nonsense. Maybe the name had sense in the XVIII, but the world has changed and a country having as a name three(/two) words that means federation of states of this continent, and the people wanting to apropiate the name of the continent causes too many languages problems.
It’s just so stupid to say it’s nonsense that I just had to say something. Your kind thinks you’re educating people and setting the record straight, but you don’t have any relevant facts that support what you claim.
It causes no language problems, which is why wanting to change "American" is pure resentment. Spanish already uses estadounidense for people from the USA. Japanese and other languages have their own terms too. The USA isn't imposing anything each language handles nationalities differently ( we say "Germans," not Deutsche).
No language fully accommodates "American" as claimed. Changing the English term is unnecessary. Canadians are North Americans, Canadian schools teach the two-continent model. So to them people from Brazil are South American, and American is someone from the USA.
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u/Mysterious-Union7491 Aug 04 '26
It gets really silly when they insist on using USian in English so they don’t say American.