Who Are WE RV'ers Really?
It has occurred to me that much of the contentious discussion on this site that so infuriates the moderators and others is due in part to the varied ideas we have about just who is an "RVer" and the d...
Forum Discussion
toedtoes wrote:wnjj wrote:toedtoes wrote:
Oh and if you really want to get exact about it. This country is NOT called America. It is the United States OF America - as in we are a group of states in the continent of America (which includes North, Central and South America) who have united as one. So, people from Canada are "Canadians", people from Mexico are "Mexicans", and people from the United States of America are "people from the United States of America".
By the same reasoning, people from the United States of America are called "United States of Americans."
Now it becomes obvious why we are abbreviated as "Americans."
It's not because we are North Americans.
Actuallly no. Your grammatical theory is incorrect.
In reality, there is no appropriate personification of the name of this country. Perhaps that was the intention of our founding fathers (that we would not be easily labeled) or perhaps it was an oversight. Whichever, they did not provide a name with which to label us.
Similarly, this was the same problem with the Soviet Union. "Russia" wasn't even part of the country's name, but all people of the Soviet Union were labeled "Russians". However, in their case, they took the label from one portion of their country rather than from the continent.
That would be equivalent to calling all the people of the USA as Massachusettians. Which might insult some of the citizens of the USA, but wouldn't utilize a label that actually identifies all the people of a continent.
Well maybe my long hand to shortened version isn't exactly correct, but the America part of Americans likely came from shortening "United States of America" and not from hijacking the name of 2 continents.
People from the Soviet Union were called Soviets.
"Americans" by itself would technically refer to people from 2 continents. Since you have to qualify them with North or South to refer to a continent, plain old American makes sense to use for the USA.
