'Murican 🇺🇸🍔🍺🏈🗽

There’s not a clear and conscience alternative to “American.” If you’re trying to differentiate us from other people from the Americas you’d just say US Citizen. And while yes the entirety of this hemisphere is some variation of America be it North, Central, or South the other countries here have distinct names and we really don’t.

At the risk of sounding like a typical US asshole, here goes nothing. This is how I’ve explained it to friends from Europe and it seemed to help.

If Brazil had decided to go by the name “United States of Brazil” we would still call them Brazilians because there is another country with the title “United States” that also exists. Similar to how we call people from the Peoples Republic of China, Chinese. We don’t call them “People’s Republicans” because that’s a title not a unique identifier or name. What if that same country decided to go by the name the Peoples Republic of Asia instead, would we call them Peoples Republicans or would we call them Asians?

The title “United States” is telling you that this area is united together and the borders represent states, not country’s. “America” tells you where those united states are, the continent of America. The term “American” is generalized and honestly doesn’t accurately represent the vast cultural differences within the United States. The states often have their own rights and laws separate from the US government and also unique cultures. Ideally we would be called by our states name for its citizens like Californian or New Yorker, for example. Similar to how you would refer to people from Europe as European unless you wanted to be specific to Italy, then you’d say Italian. But sometimes you need a general term, hence “American.”

All that being said, it is problematic and a massive reminder of this country’s bloodthirsty and genocidal colonization of a large part of North America. Looking at the country’s past shows that they were very much trying to also get central and south America as part of the United States. What better way to propagandize and make it look like they had every right to the rest of the Americas than to make it appear as though this country or that country already was America and therefore should be part of these United States? But however problematic it is this is the name we have now, for better or worse.

As an addendum of sorts. We Indigenous Americans would often much rather be called by the names of our sovereign Nations yet everyone calls us Native American. Why is that? Food for thought that might help with understanding the problematic struggle we have here. It’s not simply us as citizens that perpetuate the issue, it’s a global colonization effort whether the others realize they are participating or not. (Spoiler: they realize)

tldr: because colonization + United States is a title not a name

In Australia we call them cunts.

I knew one that was called “Doug”. I’m not sure how much of a generalisation one can make from that though, but it seemed to work for him.

“American” is the official name, though throughout history attempts have been made to find alternatives. You can read more on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonyms_for_the_United_States

The only officially and commonly used alternative for referring to the people of the United States in English is to refer to them as citizens of that country.[18] Another alternative is US-American,[19] also spelled US American.

Several single-word English alternatives for American have been suggested over time, especially Usonian, popularized by architect Frank Lloyd Wright,[20] and the nonce term United-Statesian.[21]

Writer H. L. Mencken collected a number of proposals from between 1789 and 1939, finding terms including Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Usian, Washingtonian, Usonian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican, and United Stater.[22] Names for broader categories include terms such as Western Hemispherian, New Worlder, and North Atlantican.[23][24][25]

Nevertheless, no alternative to “American” is common in English.[18]

Yankee, or Yank.

Only one country on those countries has the word “America” in its name.

It’s commonly understood by all but the most pedantic that “americans” refers exclusively to inhabitants of the USA.

North and South America are so big and diverse that there’s really no usage for the term “American” being used to refer to everyone on both continents. US just took the term for themselves and no one really cared enough to complain

A US Citizen.

Estadounidenses

I like to call them Muricans. Sure, it may sound super similar to “Americans”, but it’s different enough to sorta make things clearer.

I’m joking. This idea is horrible.

Language rules (in English at least) are descriptive not prescriptive. They try to explain why Americans are called Americans, not determine what they’re called. They’re called Americans, whether or not it’s logical, or the ideal descriptor, or fits with other names, that’s what they’re called.

Also most English speaking countries don’t have an “American” continent, they have North and South America as separate continents, so you would say someone is North or South American to refer to the continent, not just American. Similar to how some people consider Eurasia a single continent but very few people would identify as Eurasian.

A “US-American” if you need to be very clear. But most people just say “American”.

To add a bit of context, it isn’t arrogance or something that drives us to use “American” as a demonym, it’s just the linguistic norm. I don’t find any of the other names offensive (except seppo, but that one is meant to offend me), but most of us would probably do a double take at the term “USican” or “USian.” Virtually all of us would accept Yankee.

Further reading: the full name of Mexico is the United Mexican States. If we wanted to be pedantic, we could say that using the reference to the US would be ambiguous, as they too are technically a US.

Yank