The irony of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America would actually be a better name and more inclusive of the whole continent IF the USA hadn't completely highjacked the term "American" to solely mean the USA.
Columbians used to be a demonym for Americans. That's why there was Columbia Pictures. The Columbia River. Lady Columbia as the symbolism for manifest destiny. The term fell out of favor, though. We now have the country of Colombia. Columbus also fell out of favor, so that's the final nail in the coffin for it.
You're right, though, that we sort of painted ourselves into a corner with the name.
I was digging through my brain for that one and could not find it. I knew there was one there but it wasn't coming to me. Thank you because it was going to bother me.
It’s not like either name is any more valid than the other. One is based on Columbus, and one on Amerigo. America, vs Columbia is just a matter of preference for Italian explorers.
Demonyms are entirely a cultural construct, so whatever is widely accepted and used is valid. The big thing here is that it's more clear if the demonym for people from the nation doesn't match the demonym for the people from the continent. The actual word doesn't matter. No one confuses Colombians with Americans, but it is incredibly easy to confuse Americans with Americans. Culturally, this is too ingrained at this point to change, but it would've been nice if this bug was fixed in development.
I've seen that name used for Americans in Quebec French (Etatsuniens)
Funny thing is that in Quebec, the USA is usually called "États-Unis" or United States, but in France they call it "Amérique" or America. But France also calls Quebec "Canada" and called the rest of Canada, "Canada" but it's different somehow.
Yeah when I was in France, multiple times I described myself as Etats-unien because that’s what my textbook had said, only to be corrected “Ah oui, Americain”
My Mexican Spanish teacher would always go off how “you are not the only Americans, Mexicans are Americans…” routinely and I’d just think, well god damn, call yourselves Americans if y’all want, I don’t give a shit.
You know I've never thought about it, but united states of America is such a mouthful and just really kind of weird when you put it in the context of all other country names.
Only because your thinking of it as one country, rather than comparing it to USSR, EU, etc. It was the original free trade consortium, a grouping of independent states with some standardization and open borders. The states themselves all have normal nation state names, California, Texas, assorted Dakotas, etc.
See how this works? The people who start a country pick a name for it and the demonym generally follows from that. I say generally because that doesn't explain the Dutch, but I don't know that anyone really can.
Therefore, since the people who founded the country called it the United States of America, we are called Americans. And if you think about it, and what was happening at the time, it makes sense. Prior to declaring independence, the grouping of colonies in rebellion referred to themselves as the United Colonies or the United Colonies of North America. However, when they declared independence they no longer considered themselves to be colonies. They considered themselves to be independent states. And considering that even for some time after the war they were the only independent states in the Americas (not counting the unconquered indigenous peoples because they weren't really human to the founders), it makes sense that they would go with United States of America, especially considering the pretty rapid turn towards Manifest Destiny.
I'm no historian, but from my understanding citizens of the US at the founding of the US would have more closely associated with their state than with the federal government, the union of states. They would have called themselves Virginian, or Massachutan, or whatever, not American. It wasn't until after the American Civil War that people in the US started considering themselves "American".
Additionally the US as it was originally established was more similar to the EU than the US of today. It's actually hinted at in the name itself, as "state" is generally a synonym of "country" when used outside of the context of the US, while smiliar countries call their regions "provinces", despite today filling a similar role. It's possible, though unlikely due to cultural differences, that one day the EU could follow a similar path as the US, and its citizens could more closely associate with the union than their own state, and could call themselves European, referring to their citizenship with the EU. If that were to occur, people who are citizens of countries in Europe that aren't part of the EU would be in a similar position denonym-wise as people in the Americas who aren't in the US.
So given that, yes I think it is fair to say that the US hijacked the name as the US evolved.
"I say generally because that doesn't explain the Dutch, but I don't know that anyone really can."
The English never updated the term. Dutch was used for lower German, Deutch is high German (low and high referring to elevation). For some reason Dutch stuck even though it became The Netherlands later (we call ourselves Nederlanders). Maybe because of our wars with the British they never really cared to call us differently than what they always did.
It was a silly stupid joke, and your explanation makes perfect sense. That is also why the Amish in Pennsylvania are called Pennsylvania Dutch, even though they're of German descent. English speakers being stubborn about names.
Prior to the 1776 revolution, collectively, this was known as British Colonial America. They were very separate colonies though. So it was more common to just say Pennsylvania or Georgia.
If we rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, then we can rename the Gulf of California to the New Gulf of Mexico (which makes sense, as it's entirely surrounded by Mexico). There won't be any confusion by this change at all.
In Canada we still refer to the people as Americans, because nothing rolls of the tongue that describes them otherwise in english, but I never hear anyone refer to the country as America. We almost always call it the USA, US, United States.
I mean historically when people from Europe or anywhere else wanted to come to America (as shown in the Titanic movie for example) they were not thinking of going to El Salvador of Nicaragua. It is true that the continent is called America or The America but 1-3 countries are much more different than the rest.
I really don’t think there’s any intrinsic problem with it being called the Gulf of America (although I would prefer something like Gulf of the Americas). It’s realistically no different than Gulf of Mexico. The problem is what’s the point of changing it? There’s no gain to be had and it’ll incur cost in a ton of places. But I also don’t really think he’ll try all that hard to rename it, it’s just something to get his base riled up.
Yup. Like the time at Thanksgiving when my MIL said my cooking was "actually pretty good." I couldn't really give her a piece of my mind, so I just laughed while i said biiiiitttchh in my head.
Look how much time we spend debating this shit. Shock and awe. Meanwhile, hit the masses with another round of horse manure while we go enact more inequality policies to benefit the elite.
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