America/American

the United States; U.S. national/citizen/resident. The people of some 40 countries (those of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and South America) can correctly call themselves "Americans." Do not use when you only mean citizens of the United States. The terms "Asian," "African," and "European" properly refer to peoples in all the countries of their respective continents; it is puzzling to many outside the United States why "American" refers to only one of the American populations. Bernard E. Bobb, an emeritus professor of history at Washington State University, has one explanation: "We are the only nation in the world whose official name ['United States of America'] includes the word 'America.' Every other nation in the New World, from Canada to Argentina, has a specific name that doesn't include that word." "United Statesian" and "United Statian" have been used occasionally by enterprising writers and thinkers, as well as by former wrestler and governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura: "My fellow United Statians. ... I like to refer to us as United Statians. We always use the term Americans, but when you think about it there's North America, South America, Central America—I've always referred to myself as a United Statian" (interview by Misheharu Dawkins and Jonathan Miller in The Minneapolis Observer ). No convenient shorthand term is presently available comparable to Peruvian, Angolan, Canadian, etc. "Only in Spanish is there a word for 'Americans/United Statesians': Estadounidenses" (Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz). The American Political Science Association's style manual recommends the use of "United States, U.S., U.S. citizen, or citizen" instead of the ethnocentric "America/American" when the country is meant, reserving the use of "America/American" to refer to one or both continents. The use of "American" is ambiguous in many terms like "American history," "American heroes," and "American foreign policy," and on the grounds of clarity alone should be replaced. The exception to its use for U.S. citizens are the names used for immigrants and their descendants (Italian Americans, Japanese Americans, Native Americans); those terms are used only in the U.S. and are thus unlikely to be ambiguous or confused with Native Canadian, etc. See also all-American, hyphenated Americans.