Few people ever notice that our country has no real name. The United States is not a proper name per se. You may call it a collective or descriptive name, but united states could refer to any group of states anywhere in the world.
This ambiguity was apparently corrected by adding America to United States. Instead it was then when an ambiguity really started, because people mistook the name of the continent for the name of our country. This is how it came to be that we call the U.S., America and the people living in the U.S. are Americans.
At the forming stages of our nation, an attempt was made to name our country Columbia, after Columbus. That is why the location of its capital was then called District of Columbia. Some may even remember a song titled Columbia, Gem of the Ocean. Some sculptors erected statues honoring Columbia, suspiciously similar to the Statue of Liberty (often seen in Columbia Picture logo). However, for some unknown and unclear reason, the name Columbia was dropped like a hot potato All references to its proposal and refusal — but especially to its refusal — was lost in reference books and encyclopedias.
It is pure speculation whether this lack of information on such an important matter as the naming of a nation was a cover up or if it has something to do with the fact that the United States was first mentioned as Columbia in a poem dedicated to George Washington, written by a woman, or the fact that she was black, or the fact that she was a Senegal-born slave from Massachusetts. However, nowadays few people know that Phyllis Wheatley was behind that suggestion.
Lacking a real name, the nation and its nationals took it spontaneously out of its last word of the one artificially given, America. Usage sanctioned it and froze it forever. “So, big deal,” you may say; but, have you ever bothered to ponder what happened then to the other millions of Americans? Well, our choice tagged them with an adjective forever.
Spanish Americans or Latin Americans were never again Americans, despite the fact that the name America originally applied only to the southern part of this hemisphere. The adjective American, used to describe the inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere, became by usage, exclusive for those born in the United States of America.
To an American, this was no big deal. To the people south of the border, it was. They saw how Americans composed songs to their America, cutting it off from theirs and taking over its name. Vigilant Latin American intellectuals frowned at the ever-growing misused word americano among their own people and decided to do something.
They had to give us a name. However, since our nation didn’t have one, it was difficult for them, too, to come up with nationality noun and adjective. However, upset people can be persistent. Soon they made up an adjective and noun: estadounidense (same for Spanish and Portuguese) — Unitedstater. Actually a more appropriate name would have been and would be US Americans or EU americanos.
Teachers, grammarians and writers force-fed this awkward word down the throats of their people, until every self-respecting Latin American used it — in his writings at least. However, the word estadounidense was more difficult to pronounce than americano. People stuck to americano or norteamericano (again — the same words in Spanish and Portuguese, although in the latter, it is spelled with a hyphen, norte-americano) in their every day oral language.
The word estadounidense was not a smart choice. In our Hemisphere, there were other “United States.” These are the United States of Mexico and the United States of Venezuela. The USA pressing, they changed their official names. The United States of Brazil had it changed to Federal Republic of Brazil — República Federativa do Brasil. But since there was no other option, Unitedstater would do. However the perfect fit would have been as I said before EU americano, US American.
They call us other names, too.
Everybody knows Latin Americans have coined other — not very kind — words to give Americans a proper national name. The most widely known is gringo, abused by Mexicans in derogatory form. Gringo means foreigner in other Latin countries, in Argentina, for instance. They also use the word, yanqui (in Spanish) or ianque (in Portuguese) applied not only to Yankees, but to all Unitedstaters whether from the North or the South.
This analysis may sound like a trivia game. I can assure you it is not trivia to Latin Americans. They see this misunderstanding as a serious name snatching with total impunity. Furthermore, the culprit never tires of rubbing it in every day, every hour, every second. How? The U.S. produces enormous amounts of books, musicals, films, TV programs, etc., and dumps a huge surplus not only on the rest of the world, but especially, on our Latin neighbors. To make things worse, these constant dumps, usually poorly translated, have the name America stamped on them, offending people who hate our use of this term — day after day after day.
The popular musical West Side Story, shows a group of Puerto Rican immigrants — usually interpreted by white Anglo American performers — singing out how happy they are to be in America. We see them happy to be in (the United States of) America. Everybody else in the world interprets it differently. The show presents Puerto Ricans as if they were natives of Africa or of some other unknown continent, not born in an American island as they actually are.
As a matter of fact, Puerto Ricans are American twice. They are Americans because they are born in America (the continent) and they are US Americans because they are U.S. citizens by birth.
The words of Bates’ beautiful patriotic song America, the Beautiful reminds you of the beautiful landscapes of our country, of course. You sit back while listening and you can almost see every land of the U.S.A. from sea to shining sea. However, what everybody else in the world sees are the landscapes of what we, also in error, call “the Americas” from Argentina to Alaska.
The Americas is our second most absurd product of usage. Should we use the term Anglo America, for instance, and then the term Latin America, the plural Americas would make sense. However, if we have one America on the one side and then one Latin America on the other, the plural makes no sense at all.
To picture this discrepancy more clearly, let’s call everyone who is white just human and let’s call everybody else “something” human, like “black humans, yellow humans, Spanish humans”? Do you understand now why Latin Americans feel so suspicious about it?
That which to a US American is the result of accepted usage, to a Latin American or to a European is, in the best of cases, carelessness. If the lack of a clear geographical definition begins by affecting our own hemisphere, no wonder nobody in the world has any trust in our geographic knowledge.
An Italian friend of mine recently criticized an ad of defunct Panam an American airline who took pride in classifying itself as representative of the United States. In its ad, Panam included Tel Aviv (in Israel, a Middle Eastern country) as one of its European destinations. He pointed this out to me, “I understand that an everyday citizen, who sees Israel within the European cultural framework, be confused, but an international airline?”
Not few international companies fail to see the way others see us from abroad. This is sad, because just by doing a bit of research, we Americans could give a more sophisticated image, as we do through our technology in consumer goods.
It is no surprise that Unitedstaters divide the regions of America following peculiar patterns different from those used by the rest of the world. For most of us, Latin America is everything south of the border. America is the United States — some even exclude far-away Alaska and Canada (with a group of people who “should speak English instead of French”).
Well, this division is wrong.
America is the name of the whole hemisphere, not the name of our nation. There is no such thing as “the Americas,” except in a poetic sense. Otherwise, it is the absurd combination of one America (with no adjective) with one Latin America.
Latin America includes all countries whose languages originated from Latin: Spanish, French and Portuguese only. Latin America excludes the English- and Dutch-speaking countries. Jamaica, for instance, is not part of Latin America, as some may erroneously think. Although surprisingly to some people, this term includes French Canada.
Hispanic America includes only Spanish-language countries. People tend to view Hispanic America excluding Brazil,. However, the whole Iberian peninsula — including Portugal — was called Hispania in Roman times. Therefore, Brazil and Brazilian are also part of Hispanic America. Haiti, French Canada and any English-speaking Caribbean island or country is excluded, though.
Iberoamérica (a term used only in Spanish and Portuguese) applies only to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, with strong family ties. It is actually synonym of Hispanic America.
Angloamérica (Anglo America) is the English-language America (this term, seldom used in English, is increasing in use in Spanish and Portuguese). It covers English-language Canada, USA, Jamaica, Belize, the former British Guiana and all English-language islands in the Caribbean.
If you think they overreact, here is a US American reacts in a similar circumstance before what he considers a wrong classification. White Englishspeaking people in Dade County strongly rejected the term “Anglo.” Anglo was an attempt to define the ethnic roots of the South Floridian population. This term meant English-speaking people.
However, since it would dump English-speaking whites and blacks into one classification, white Anglos didn’t like it. But they don’t object being called Anglos only if it meant whites or called “whites” as opposed to blacks and Hispanics. And at the same time, they are doing to others what they don’t want others to do to them. In fact, they dumped into one category, Hispanics, a culture that embraces people from all races, white, black, yellow, etc., but is not a race in itself).
Whites who object to the term Anglo, do it because they want to weed-out English-speaking blacks and to place them under a different category: American blacks or black Americans (!).
It is not easy to replace with logical terms those fostered by usage. However, if we acknowledge their existence, maybe we can undo some misunderstandings or, at least, not get upset by other peoples’ reactions.
The term “American” among is not clear either. The actual meaning of the word American, as usage has it, describes a white person, preferably blond — although not necessarily so, as long as he or she has a light complexion.
American is not an Indian (and I don’t know why he cannot be an Indian American). An Indian would be an Amerindian or an American Indian, but a Black person would be a Black American or an American Black, according to which may be more important.
Some blacks now, are calling themselves African-American, ignoring the fact Africa is not only black and that black skinned people are not one race, but almost one hundred races with completely different culture. It is like Europeans calling themselves European American, instead of using the European country of origin name, like French American, etc.
Despite the fact that he has been living here for generations, even before the West turned US American, a California or Texan Mexican is not an American either. He is a Mexican American or a Hispanic American or Chicano.
Usage is constantly pouring new ethnic classifications by combining American with other national adjective: Italian American, Polish American, Cuban American, etc.
A most intriguing term is, no doubt, “ Native American.” For some, it means someone born in “America.” For others, it means an American Indian, excluding Spanish-American Indians. Actually, native meaning a race “originated in America” is not valid. According to anthropologists, no race originated in this continent. Indians came to America from Asia through the Bering Straits.
This divisive linguistics will remain. There is nothing we can do about it because it is sanctioned by usage and the majority.