Its not a situation of Appropriation. American/America acquired the specific connotation of English colonies in North America very early on, especially in English. But the people living there considered themselves to be British for a good long time. It was applied from the outside, particularly by the actually in Britain British, but also IIRC by the Spanish and residents of their holdings in Latin America. The Spanish convention was to refer to their colonies there as Columbia/Colombians and the period where most of our modern Latin American countries were formed was driven in part by an ambition to put together a Gran Columbia inspired by the model of United States. Multiple states under an over arching Federal government, based on a representative democracy.
So the US didn’t appropriate “American”. The Republic of Columbia coopted the original catch all of South and Central American residents.
And generally speaking in no other contexts to do we have simple common use catchalls for entire hemispheres. Because they kind of lack utility. So attempting to wedge “resident of the Western Hemisphere” into “American” is kind of never gonna work.
A woman from Michigan. I only just discovered the plural, Michigeese. I think I’m going to start using it, at least until somebody kicks me in the teeth. (I have kickboxers in my family, so that probably won’t take as long as you might think…)
Yeah, generally it’s narrowed down with a ‘Western’ or ‘Upstate’. Wherever is can be safely narrowed down to a more specific area it generally is, starting with counties (in my part of the state you’ll hear ‘Erie County Residents’ or ‘Niagara County Residents’ and frequently ‘Southern Tier Residents’) and if it can be made city specific you’ll get ‘Buffalonians’ or ‘Rochesterians’.
This article is entirely about (an article about) demonyms, and does not include the word “demonym”. (Though I see that @nodolra used it in a comment.)
Yes, citizens of the USA (which is after all not the only group of unjited states in the Americas) are rather unique in not having a unique denonym - except in other languages - perhaps we should switch to měiguó rén, états-unien, or estadunidense
You don’t drop the ‘R’. You move it. The ‘R’ that falls off the end of ‘caaaah’ grafts itself onto the end of ‘idear.’ As in, “I have no idear why he’d say that, he’s from away.”
Yeah, I used to be a New Yorker. Now I’m an Upstater. (If asked to be more specific, I say ‘Schenectadian’, since nobody that isn’t local has heard of the suburb I’m living in. Which is in Schenectady County, so I suppose that using the whole to refer to the part is a synecdoche.)
The folks in the city on the other side of the Hudson are Trojans.
Sounds too much like meshugas, which is indeed a perfectly good Yiddish word for what this thread has turned into.
As a Philadelphian who lived in New Jersey long enough to be referred to as a New Jerseyite, I must reclaim my heritage now that I moved close enough to the city to avoid being called a Pennsyltuckian…
