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Different languages use different terms for citizens of the United States, the people known in English as Americans. All forms of English refer to these people as "Americans", derived from "The United States of America", but there is some linguistic ambiguity over this due to the other senses of the word American, which can also refer to people from the Americas in general. Many other languages use cognates of "American" to refer to people from the United States, but others, particularly Spanish, primarily use terms derived from "United States". There are various other local and colloquial names for the Americans.

Development of the term

The adjective "American" originally referred to the landmass known as the Americas or America. This name is derived from the feminized Latin version of Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci's first name. "Americans" originally referred to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and later to European settlers and their descendants. English use of the term "American" for people of European descent dates to the 17th century; the earliest recorded appearance is in Thomas Gage's The English-American: A New Survey of the West Indies in 1648. "American" especially applied to people in British America, and thus its use as a demonym for the United States derives by extinction.

The United States Declaration of Independence of 1776 refers to "the thirteen united States of America", making the first formal use of the country name; the name was officially adopted by the nation's first governing constitution, the Articles of Confederation, in 1777. The Federalist Papers of 1787-1788, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison to advocate the ratification of the United States Constitution, use the word "American" in both its original, pan-American sense, but also in its United States sense: Federalist Paper 24 refers to the "American possessions of Britain and Spain", i.e. land outside of the United States, while Federalist Papers 51 and 70 refer to the United States as "the American republic". People from the United States increasingly referred to themselves as "Americans" through the end of the 18th century; the 1795 Treaty of Peace and Amity with the Barbary States refers to "American Citizens", and George Washington spoke to his people of "he name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity…" in his 1796 farewell address. Eventually, this usage spread through other English-speaking countries; the noun "American" now chiefly refers to natives or citizens of the United States in all forms of the English language.

International use

International speakers of English refer to people from the United States as "Americans", while cognates of "American" are used in many other languages. French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian speakers use cognates of American (Japanese: アメリカ人 roma-ji: amerika-jin), (Template:Lang-ru) (Mandarin Chinese: pinyin- měiguórén, traditional- 美國人, simplified- 美国人) to refer to U.S. citizens. Spanish and Portuguese, however, chiefly use terms derived from Estados Unidos, the cognate of "United States" – estadounidense and estadunidense, respectively. The same linguistic ambiguity that occurs in English use of the term "American" occurs in the other European languages: to compensate for this, the French and the Italian may refer to U.S. citizens respectively as étasunien and statunitense, though this is less common, and Germans may distinguish an Amerikaner as a U.S.-Amerikaner. This confusion is also present in Portuguese, as people from the United States may alternatively be referred to as americanos in that language. However, in Spanish, americano chiefly refers to all people from the Western Hemisphere, and using it in the United States sense may be considered offensive; the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas de la Real Academia Española advises against using it in this sense.

Alternate terms

English speakers may alternately refer to people from the United States as "United States citizens" or "U.S. citizens". "Yankee" is a common colloquial term for Americans in English; cognates can be found in other languages. While "Yankee" may refer to people specifically from New England or the Northern United States, it has been applied to Americans generally since the 18th century, especially by the English. The earliest recorded use in this context is in a letter by Horatio Nelson in 1784. The word "gringo", often used pejoratively, is common in Spanish and has entered into other languages including English, in which language it is recorded as early as 1871.

Spanish and Portuguese speakers may refer to people from the United States as norteamericanos, from América del/do Norte or North America, though this term may also include Canadians and to a lesser extent Mexicans. The fact that the citizens of the United States call themselves "Americans" causes discomfort for many Latin Americans, who see it as an appropriation of the collective identity of all peoples and countries of the Western Hemisphere. This usage of the term has, however, historical roots. Several English alternatives for "American" have been used or suggested over time, of which the most common is Usonian, popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright. H. L. Mencken collected a number of alternate terms from between 1789 and 1939 for the December 1947 issue of American Speech; according to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, the list includes, in relative historical sequence, "such terms as Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Usian, Washingtonian, Usonian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican, United Stater." Nevertheless, with the exception of "United States" or "U.S. citizen", no alternative to "American" is common.

Notes

1. ^ "American". From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 10, 2008.
2. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, p. 87. Retrieved November 28, 2008.
3. Arciniegas, Germán. Amerigo and the New World: The Life & Times of Amerigo Vespucci. Translated by Harriet de Onís. New York: Octagon Books, 1978.
4. "The Charters of Freedom". National Archives. Retrieved 2007-06-20.
5. Articles of Confederation, Article 1. Available at the Library of Congress' American Memory.
6. James Madison. "The Federalist no. 51".
7. Alexander Hamilton. "The Federalist no. 70".
8. "The Barbary Treaties: Treaty of Peace and Amity".
9. "Washington's Farewell Address 1796". From The Avalon Project. Retrieved November 10, 2008.
10. "Americano". From the Real Academia Española. Retrieved November 10, 2008.
11. ^ "Yankee". From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 27, 2008.
12. "Gringo". From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 27, 2008.
13. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gringo
14. http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ameriquests/viewarticle.php?id=21&layout=html&OJSSID=4d93ed8e8b059174a7b4b41c3d215eff
15. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1999:1580) gives the first meaning of the noun "Usonian" as "a native or inhabitant of the United States". See wiktionary:Usonian.
16. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, p. 88. Merriam-Webster: 1994.
17. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English.

References

• Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1994.
• Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. June 2002.

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