The American Question

[optimutt]

What do you think of when you think of “America”? Do you think of an afternoon walk on Cape Cod? Do you think of how shoddy that last pitch was and how could your team give it up again? Do you think of a quiet afternoon in a coffee house, sipping a tasty hot beverage? Or do you think of endless plains interrupted only sporadically by the random

Comments

[anonymous]

Perhaps citizens of the USA are called Americans because the nation's name is United States of America. I believe ours is the only nation in this hemisphere that includes the word 'America'. Not arrogance, just fact.

The supposition is that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, a navigator for Columbus on his later trips to the Caribbean. Waldseemuller labeled the southern continent America on his 1507 world map based on an assumption that this was the derivation of the name. As Vespucci and Columbus travelled to and from the Caribbean region, this might make sense applied to South America, tho perhaps less so applied to North America.

There is another more likely derivation. In the 1470s, fishing ships made regular voyages from Bristol, England, to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, returning home with loads of salt cod. One of the merchants in Bristol who imported these shiploads was a wealthy merchant named Richard Ameryk. He was to finance the voyage of John Cabot to Newfoundland in 1497, the discovery of North America (officially, that is!). As a Customs Officer, Ameryk also paid Cabot's pension. The name America was used for this continent in Bristol c 1500.

I love 'the people from the beautiful country'!

Staters, etc, might be a little close to 'statist'...not descriptive of what our Republic is meant to be, but so for what some would try to make it! You might consider telling those who question your right to call yourself American that that is exactly what you are. Those from Canada, or Brazil, or Costa Rica are citizens of those countries.

Perhaps if someone was from the nation of Brazil America, or Canada America, or Belize America he could call himself American.

I concur with the hyphenated American designation. Meaningless and ultimately divisive. When your great grandfather's family arrived in the US back in 1870s from Denmark, Hans Johansen forbade his family to speak in Danish. "We are Americans now. Our language is English." Grandpa grew up not knowing his native language.

Keep up the thoughts!