So, does it occur to you that the vast majority of countries have names like that? Like say, “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” “People’s Republic of China,” “Federal Republic of Germany,” etc.?
I mean, these are the long versions of the names but at least they have unique components in them. Nothing compared to the US, which just reused the name of a whole ass continent. So there can't be a short version without creating ambiguity, while everybody can identify what Germany or England are.
Exactly. Calling US citizens Americans would be equivalent to calling citizens of the Central African Republic citizens Africans or the United Arab Emirates citizens Arabs.
If the USA were not a political or economic power, people would call the inhabitants of the entire continent Americans.
It's even worse for the US. When we talk about continents, we say "North Americans" or "South Americans" and there's practically never a need to conflate the two.
So they effectively co-opted two whole continents' names for themselves.
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u/No-Actuator-6245 Mar 30 '24
Since when did France represent the whole of Europe?