People Who Don't Like It When Americans Call Themselves "Americans"

Here in the United States of America, we like to refer to ourselves as "Americans". This occasionally strikes a cord with some of the other American nations on this half of the planet, since they too, are also technically in America, therefore they should also be referred to as "Americans".

And by "other countries" I really mean Argentina, because it's always Argentina.

Look, I see where you're coming from, and yes, technically you are correct, and I do believe that if we here in the New World had a common nomenclature for ourselves, combined with our common cultures of defying European monarchs (expect for you Canada, but we all love you anyway), we'd all get a long much better here in the Western Hemisphere.

Granted, I think us in the US have a long list of apologies to hand out to those South of the border, since we've kinda screwed you guys over since you became sovereign nations. We're working on a trade agreement with Canada to contract out our apologies, and trust me, Canadian apologies are much better quality than American, mainly because Canadians actually mean them.

Unlike when we apologized in the 1940's for starting all those Civil Wars in the 1800's, and then spent the entire 1950's-80's starting Civil Wars again.

"Sorrie aboot that", as the Canadians say.

On to the topic at hand.

I'm going to level with you, us here in the US need to call ourselves Americans because we have nothing else to refer to ourselves as.

I get where you guys are coming from, and I sympathize, understand that unlike your wars for independence, we weren't 100% sure with what we were doing in ours.

We realized we'd be the first sovereign nation this side of the Atlantic (and this side of the Pacific) so we needed something really big and hyperbolic to really make claim to this land we called America, and also we sort of thought we'd be like Greece and consist of a collection of independent but cooperative states and we didn't need some over-arching name for all of us, thus we ended up with The United States of America. Since back then, we really didn't say American, as much as we just referred to ourselves as to what state we were from.

Which made Patrick Henry's "I am not a Virginian, I am an American" line sound so much cooler back then.

So really if you're looking for someone to blame, blame Patrick Henry.

But then that whole Confederacy idea didn't really work out and we became a more collective nation with individual regional governing bodies. And if you think that went over well you should of seen what happened when that boiled over 80 year later. Actually, you might be able to relate since you guy's were coming out of another civil war and we were going into the one I was implying in the previous sentence.

You see almost every country has two names, a longer descriptive name, and a shorten one. For example.

Germany is actually The Federal Republic of Germany. Australia is the Commonwealth of Australia. Greece is the Hellenic Republic. North Korea is famously The Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Ironic, since it's not a Democracy, Republic or for the People.

Also you guys over in Argentina, you're The Argentine Republic.

From what I've seen there's two exceptions to this rule. Canada just goes by Canada (you guys are adorable) and us in the USA, go by The United States of America.

Granted you can make a case for the United Kingdom, which goes by The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But firstly, they stole our whole "united thing" back in the 40's and two, they all go by their region anyway, the British, the Scottish, the Irish, and the Welsh (not forgetting you guys).

Point being, we call ourselves American not out of nationalistic pride, well OK we do do that, but in more of Fourth of July context than egocentric, well OK we also do it being egocentric, but we mainly do it out of convince and a lack of other options.

Also I don't want to say we claimed "dibs" on the whole American thing, but we did call it first. Which may not sound fair, but neither is the shotgun game.

Thus is life.

(You may be stating that I just made a Strawman Argument in that comparison, and you'd be correct by stating that)

That's why I think that us, together as two separate continents, need to come together and find a new word to describe ourselves collectively.

But that won't be easy.

Westerner implies a lot of historical racism, New Worlder sounds really pretentious, Not-European could make the Asian countries mad, Not-European and Not-Asian sounds racist again while also could make the African nations mad.

You see what I mean, it's hard to name a people without having a common name to derive from. Other than, granted, America.

Here maybe some examples will help explain this.

Canada is named Canada after a sort-of translated Iroquois word "Kanata"which means "village". Since really that's all Canada was for a lot of it's colonial history.

Afghanistan is a sort-of translation of "the land of Afghans" since "istan" is a suffix meaning "the land of".

France comes from Latin Francia which means "the land of the Franks", which is kinda funny in America (sorrie, the US), since we consider Franks to be sausages of German origin and the French hate the Germans. Because kicking someone's ass twice in a very short period of time and almost burning Paris to the ground will leave some grudges. But the real hated is in their linguistic differences. Also that fact that France hates everyone and everyone hates France.

And then you guys in Argentina, comes from argentum, latin for silver, because the Spanish came and enslaved your ancestors and forced them to mine for silver so it can be minted and shipped back to Europe to finance wars for other countries to enslave. Sheesh, that's pretty fucking metal of you guys to do that. WOW. 

Why the hell do you want to be called Americans? You're fucking silver people who raised out of the mines and reclaimed your ancestral lands from a  group of people who all talk with a lisp. 

Nothing against people with lisps, it just makes Spaniards speaking Spanish sound funny. 

By that I mean it makes them sound like stereotypical gay men, and for that I am sorrie, because that's offensive. 

Man I'm just pissing everyone off today.

Hey! Look it's Neil Patrick Harris, a not stereotypical gay man, gay man, who everyone loves and no one could ever get mad at! (Unless you're Ben Affleck in Gone Girl, but that was acting)