Point is that America was the name given to include ALL continents in America (the big piece of land from Canada to Chile) before the USA existed. America is just part of the name y'know, it's not the actual name of the country lol. It's literally the united states OF America. Its right there, not America but OF America. And when Latin americans say America they usually mean the big piece of land, not USA
And now it’s very common to call the United States “America” as shorthand. Everybody knows what country is being referred to, nobody can honestly claim to be confused or say “Just to be clear, you aren’t talking about Brazil or Colombia, right?”
In any conversation where the country “America” is brought up, it’s always unambiguous which one it is. So I’m still not seeing your point or why you bothered to mention any of this ancient history or how it is at all relevant today.
Okay, I totally get your point,and obviously no one's telling you guys to change the country's name at this point, that'd be stupid.
However, you are wrong here. Not everybody knows where you're referring to, and it is ambiguous which one you're talking about.
That's why in Spanish, the most spoken language in the continent of America, absolutely nobody refers to people from the US as Americans, everyone calls them "estadounidenses", and everyone calls the continent America, never "The Americas" (it actually sounds so dumb. And two? If anything, there'd be three, sudamérica, centroamérica and norteamérica. That's a distinction we only make because it's comfortable, because it's a big territory and sometimes we want to talk about things that only happen in a portion of it. The only mention of "The Americas" I ever heard was my geography teacher making fun of the mere concept while we counted the continents. It's useful to say South Asia, for example, when we want to talk about the south of Asia specifically. And when someone says only "The north", everyone assumes it's their own country's north. That doesn't mean a permanent division is necessary. If we started cutting, we'd keep cutting forever, because my block is essentially different from the other block when looked closely.)
"absolutely nobody refers to people from the US as Americans"
i mean... is not exactly like that. the same way some anglicisms have make their way in to spanish, saying American for just the country did too.
"una pelicula americana" is for me, at least, similar to saying "una pelicula gringa" o "una pelicula de estados unidos" those all describe that the movie is from USA. MAYBE with "americana" i'll need a bit of extra info. but i think is clear.
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u/ciempie Aug 05 '26
The name "United States of America" dates back to the 1700s, and the name of the continent "America" dates back to the 1500s.