Is there any explanation to the fact people in the US usually call their country "America", instead of the whole continent? I believe it's an English common use of the word, because I went to England in 2000, and talking to a guy about language differences he said something like "in America they say..."

Anyway, I've been thinking about some theories:

- Perhaps the land had no name when the first settlers arrived? So, people would only refeer to the new world as "America".

- Is it easier to say "I'm American" rather than saying "I'm United-Statian"? (believe it or not, that word exists in Spanish and Portuguese) :D

- Just lack of imagination? :p

cheers

I would suggest its because the name of the country is the united states of america which is a mouthful to actually say. The same thing happens in australia to be honest, the true name of australia is "the commonwealth of Australia" which no one would actually say so its just australia. The other reason is that the other nation on that continent is canada so there isnt that much confusion as to who your talking about

I would suggest its because the name of the country is the united states of america which is a mouthful to actually say. The same thing happens in australia to be honest, the true name of australia is "the commonwealth of Australia" which no one would actually say so its just australia.

Good points. Even Mexico is "United States of Mexico". :)



The other reason is that the other nation on that continent is canada so there isnt that much confusion as to who your talking about

Just a correction: the American Continent is from the North of Canada to the South of Argentina / Chile. Unless you're talking about "North America", but I believe that Mexico is considered "North America", too (I've already read that it was in Central America).

cheers

As Asguard said it's easier to just use the word American and there can't be much confusion as all other countries use a different word to identify themselves.
North America and South America are officially considered two seperate continents. Of which if I recall correctly North America includes Mexico, Canada, The Majority of islands of the Caribbean and Some of Central America such as Honduras, However there's usually a debate about exactly where the two continents are divided.

Is there any explanation to the fact people in the US usually call their country "America", instead of the whole continent? I believe it's an English common use of the word, because I went to England in 2000, and talking to a guy about language differences he said something like "in America they say..."In the colonial days when the Brits said "America" they vaguely meant the entire Western Hemisphere, but they generally were only referring to their part of it, what is now the Eastern USA and Canada. After independence it was easy to call their part "Canada," but "the United States" was a mouthful then as it is now, so it was easy to continue referring to it as "America." We generally followed British usage for a long time, and since "the United States" wasn't any easier for us to say than for anybody else (especially if American speech had already diverged from British to the point that it was noticeably slower, as it is today), what else were we to call this place but "America?"

But as for "the whole continent," there is no continent that is simply America. There is North America and South America (and Central America in some models) but no just plain "America." The whole region is "the Americas," but not "America." Some Latin Americans use the adjective americano to refer to a product or characteristic of the whole hemisphere, but never the noun.
Anyway, I've been thinking about some theories: Perhaps the land had no name when the first settlers arrived? So, people would only refer to the new world as "America".Well of course it didn't. North of the Rio Grande the whole continent was still on the Mesolithic/Neolithic cusp, so none of the tribes here needed for a name for that incomprehensible 3,000-mile wide space. South of the Rio Grande it was Aztlán, but even that name only referred to the area under the dominion of the Aztecs, not to the whole continent, even though it's much narrower down there and easier to conceptualize.

The name "America" arose by some ignominious coincidences of cartography and was derived from the name of an explorer who arrived after Columbus--who of course thought he had found India and to this day we call the natives "Indians." We've got a Colombia in South America and a District of Columbia in the USA, but for inscrutable reasons the continents themselves never took that name.
Is it easier to say "I'm American" rather than saying "I'm United-Statian"?Not only easier, but that grammatical construction is not even really legal in our language. We have great difficulty with countries whose names are two words. We get away with "Sri Lankan" because it happens to end in A, but I've never heard anybody say "Burkina Fasoan." "United Statese" or any variant of that would never catch on.
believe it or not, that word exists in Spanish and Portuguese.It's even easier for the Hungarians. They pronounce "USA" as a word: OO-sha. :) But outside of the Americas, most people call the United States "America" and its people "Americans," or something phonetically similar. The Chinese call it Mei guo, which means "beautiful country."
Just lack of imagination?Well hey, then try your hand at it. Use your imagination and come up with a pronounceable word for a citizen of the United States! Estadounidense has seven syllables, which is well within the range of comfortable word-length for Hispanophones, especially since the O and U merge into a dipththong in vernacular speech. But English is a language based on Anglo-Saxon monosyllables and we need something at least as short as "American." :) After all, there's a reason we don't object too strongly when Anglophones outside of the USA call us "Yanks," even though only the thirteen million people in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut are actually Yankees.
Good points. Even Mexico is "United States of Mexico".No. It's los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the Mexican United States.
Just a correction: the American Continent is from the North of Canada to the South of Argentina / Chile.I don't think any geographer considers it to be a single continent these days.
Unless you're talking about "North America", but I believe that Mexico is considered "North America", too (I've already read that it was in Central America).When I was a kid in the 1950s we were taught that Mexico was in Central America. But the dividing line is just a matter of politics, because Mexico is a signatory to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Hmmm. Then how do we explain all the members of NATO that have no Atlantic coast? :)
As Asguard said it's easier to just use the word American and there can't be much confusion as all other countries use a different word to identify themselves. North America and South America are officially considered two seperate continents. Of which if I recall correctly North America includes Mexico, Canada, The Majority of islands of the Caribbean and Some of Central America such as Honduras, However there's usually a debate about exactly where the two continents are divided.The Isthmus of Panama has always been the divider between North and South America, or Central and South America depending on whether you're talking about geography or politics. These days I think most people unconsciously assume that the Panama Canal is what separates the two continents and that's as reasonable a definition as any. No Central American nation except Panama has ever been thought of as having any part of its territory in South America.

As for the Caribbean islands, is there any accepted standard rule for assigning islands to the domain of a nearby continent? Maui and Guam don't have one. Is Malta part of Europe or Africa? Is New Zealand part of Australia? I'm not sure the Kiwis would like that. How about New Guinea? Celebes? Zamboanga? Do they go with Australia or Asia? We probably have to look at continental shelves and tectonic plates to figure that out, which means nobody could have done it a hundred years ago before they knew about tectonics.

Jamaica is just about the same distance from Colombia, Nicaragua and Florida, so it could be part of South, Central or North America.

But as for "the whole continent," there is no continent that is simply America. There is North America and South America (and Central America in some models) but no just plain "America." The whole region is "the Americas," but not "America." Some Latin Americans use the adjective americano to refer to a product or characteristic of the whole hemisphere, but never the noun.

I believe "estadounidense" is more an ideological way to call US nationals. Some people here borrowed it from Spanish (we say "estadunidense", though) but is not a common word.

Anyway, down here many people say "America" when refeering to the whole continent, although "American Continent" has been becoming widely used.



It's even easier for the Hungarians. They pronounce "USA" as a word: OO-sha. :)

Perhaps they read "USA" as an entire word, not as three separate letters. We do that sometimes, but as a joke, as "usa" means "to use" (3ª singular person).



"Well hey, then try your hand at it. Use your imagination and come up with a pronounceable word for a citizen of the United States! Estadounidense has seven syllables, which is well within the range of comfortable word-length for Hispanophones, especially since the O and U merge into a dipththong in vernacular speech. But English is a language based on Anglo-Saxon monosyllables and we need something at least as short as "American." :)

Hmmm... you may be... Unistaters now! :D


After all, there's a reason we don't object too strongly when Anglophones outside of the USA call us "Yanks," even though only the thirteen million people in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut are actually Yankees.

But... is the word "yank" said ironicaly?



No. It's los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the Mexican United States.

Yep. I mixed it up with the former "United States of Brazil" (used up to the '50s, I guess. Anyway, the sense of "confederation" has been lost in modern days, huh? ;-)



As for the Caribbean islands, is there any accepted standard rule for assigning islands to the domain of a nearby continent? Maui and Guam don't have one. Is Malta part of Europe or Africa? Is New Zealand part of Australia? I'm not sure the Kiwis would like that. How about New Guinea? Celebes? Zamboanga? Do they go with Australia or Asia? We probably have to look at continental shelves and tectonic plates to figure that out, which means nobody could have done it a hundred years ago before they knew about tectonics.

Jamaica is just about the same distance from Colombia, Nicaragua and Florida, so it could be part of South, Central or North America.

The answers to your questions are more... er... philosofical. Once I read the French Guiana is a South American country which had "its opened arms turned back to Europe". Touching.

cheers

When people ask me where I'm from when I travel I tell the "Earth" and smile.

I would suggest its because the name of the country is the united states of america which is a mouthful to actually say. The same thing happens in australia to be honest, the true name of australia is "the commonwealth of Australia" which no one would actually say so its just australia. The other reason is that the other nation on that continent is canada so there isnt that much confusion as to who your talking about

What if tasmania became it's own country ?
Would we still be called Australia ?

I would suggest it's because the name of the country is the United States of America which is a mouthful to actually say. The same thing happens in Australia to be honest, the true name of Australia is "the Commonwealth of Australia" which no one would actually say so its just Australia.Many countries have official names that are much longer than their vernacular names. The Dominion of Canada, the Federal Republic of Germany, etc.

The Czech Republic is the only Western country I can think of that actually goes by its full name, and that's a long story. The region is known to the Czechs as Čechy, pronounced CHE-khy, and means "the land of the Czechs." (They named themselves after the legendary figure Praotec Čech or "Forefather Czech," who is credited with founding the nation.) By rights, we should be using the Latin naming convention and calling the modern country Czechia. But the Romans had named the place "Bohemia" after the Bohumil, a long-extinct Celtic tribe who lived there during Roman times before the Slavic migration, and Europeans continued to call it that well into the 20th century. Many of my family members were from there and they called the place Bohemia and themselves and their language Bohemian when they spoke English. So rather than call the modern country Čechy, and put up with the entire rest of the world calling it Bohemia, they named it Česka Republika, and we all call it the Czech Republic.

Anglophones love abbreviations and we often call our own countries by their initials. This one is "the USA" or "the U.S." as often as it's called "America" by its own people. And the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland call their nation the UK. We also called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics "the USSR," and the People's Republic of China was "the PRC" in many contexts, as we stubbornly clung to the fantasy that the tiny island of Formosa represented China. People of the old Deutsche Demokratische Republic referred to it in writing as the DDR, but I don't know what they called it in speech.

But... is the word "yank" said ironicaly?You'll have to ask them to be sure, but I don't think so. The British clip their speech more than we do (they call themselves "Brits") and are always looking for ways to shorten words, so "Yankee" became "Yank." The nickname was popular in WWI, when relations between the two countries were very cordial, so I doubt that there was any derogatory connotation at that time.
What if Tasmania became its own country? Would we still be called Australia?Since Tasmania already has a name that's easy to pronounce I don't think there'd be much of a problem. Politically, we'd refer to you as part of the Antipodes, like New Zealand. Geographically I'm sure you'd continue to be part of Oceania, like Papua New Guinea.

Does anyone know the name of the contantant australia sits on?:p

Hint its not oceana (which is the name for everything on the same plate as us) or Australia (the country):p

Does anyone know the name of the contintent Australia sits on? Hint: it's not Oceania (which is the name for everything on the same plate as us) or Australia (the country).I realize Wikipedia is not considered as reliable a reference source as a dictionary or encyclopedia. Nonetheless, citing an official Australian government source, and including the less common alternate names to which you probably refer, it says:
In geology and biogeography, Australia (also called Australia-New Guinea, Sahul, Meganesia, Greater Australia, or Australinea) is a continent comprising (in order of size) the Australian mainland, New Guinea, Tasmania, and intervening islands, all of which sit on the same continental shelf. These landmasses are separated by seas overlying the continental shelf — the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania.

When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the last glacial maximum about 18,000 years ago, the lands formed a single, continuous landmass. During the past ten thousand years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania.

Geologically, the continent extends to the edge of the continental shelf, so the now-separate lands can still be considered a continent.[1] Due to the spread of flora and fauna across the single Pleistocene landmass, the separate lands have a related biota.

New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia and the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia.

Australia is described by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as either the world's largest island or the world's smallest continent.[2]

[1] Johnson, David Peter (2004). The Geology of Australia. Port Melbourne, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, page 12.
[2] Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2005). The island continent. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Retrieved on 2007-06-18.

The only country in the Americas which includes the word "America" in its official name is the USA. There you go...

The only country in the Americas which includes the word "America" in its official name is the USA. There you go...So... you've unwittingly given us a new topic. We now know that there is exactly one country with "America" in its name and one country with "Australia" in its name.

How about the other continents?

Let's stretch the rules and allow the adjectival form, e.g., "The Holy Antarctic Empire."

interesting FR, they must have changed it since i was at school because they taught us at school that the continent of "australia" actually retained its the inital name Terra australis which means "great southen land"

interesting FR, they must have changed it since I was at school because they taught us at school that the continent of "Australia" actually retained its inital name Terra Australis which means "great southen land"It sounds like you had some wacky teachers. According to Wiki that name (which just means "southern land," there's no magna in it to mean "great") has been out of vogue for about 200 years. Also, it did not refer just to Australia but to a much larger hypothetical continent.
Terra Australis (also: Terra Australis Incognita with "incognita" stressed on the second syllable, Latin for "the unknown land of the South"), was a theorized continent appearing on European maps from the 15th to the 18th century.

It was introduced by Aristotle. His ideas were later expanded by Ptolemy in the first century AD, who believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land, and that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. During the Renaissance, Ptolemy was the main source of information for European cartographers as new land started to appear on their maps. Although voyages of discovery did sometimes reduce the area where the continent could be found, cartographers held to Aristotle's opinion. Scientists argued for its existence, with such arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the south as a counterweight to the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere. Usually the land was shown as a continent around the South Pole, but much larger than the actual Antarctica, spreading far north -- in particular in the Pacific Ocean. New Zealand, first seen by a European (Abel Tasman) in 1642, was regarded by some as a part of the continent, as well as Africa and Australia.

The idea of Terra Australis was finally corrected by Matthew Flinders and James Cook.

Cook circumnavigated New Zealand, showing it could not be part of a large continent. On his second voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude, at some places even crossing the south polar circle, showing that any possible southern continent must lie well within the cold polar areas. There could be no extension into regions with a temperate climate, as had been thought before.

Flinders took command of an expedition to investigate the coastline of Australia in 1801, which he circled in an anti-clockwise direction, threading the Great Barrier Reef through what is now called Flinders Passage and surveying the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north. His charts of the coastline were remarkably accurate. After completing his work in 1803, he sailed for England. His ship was wrecked on an uncharted reef, however, and he returned to Australia in the ship's cutter, a remarkable 1,130 km (700 mile) journey.

So... you've unwittingly given us a new topic. We now know that there is exactly one country with "America" in its name and one country with "Australia" in its name.


There is no comparison. In the Americas there are more countries, in Australia there is only one, so this issue is not a problem..

There is no comparison. In the Americas there are more countries, in Australia there is only one, so this issue is not a problem..How about Europe, Africa and Asia?

Do you know countries with those words in their names what are consistently misstaken for the continent??

Well, I guess if a white dude (with a doberman at his feet) from South Africa says: I am an African, we all get the picture. :)

hmm. I always thought of myself as an American living in the US, not America. I know its the same thing, but I call it 'the US'