Alternate words for American

There have been many attempts to coin an adjective—specifically, a demonym—for United States nationals, as an alternative to American. The various attempts include Usian (pronounced "YOU-zhuhn"; SAMPA: 'yuZ@n]), Usanian, USAian, Usonian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisan, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican, USAn, Usan, Columbian, and Washingtonian. Mentions of these words have been around since the early days of the United States, but all of the variants are virtually unused and American remains the preferred term.

Use of these terms has been practiced and advocated by some non-American people to distinguish U.S. nationals from people living in other countries in the Americas. In practice, this is not usually necessary in English because American without any modifier (like South American) is well-understood to be a U.S. national and nobody else. In other languages, notably Spanish, American is sometimes more ambiguous.

The concern on the part of advocates of these terms that motivates use of the word is that, since America is part of the names of both North America and South America, it follows in their logic that American ought to be understood to mean, "inhabitant of the Americas".

Some people who deprecate use of "American" often do so as part of criticism of the people or the government of the United States, especially criticisms of US foreign policy towards the rest of the Americas. Such criticism has focused on perceived or stated policies such as Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.

Since various people have found American to be ambigious since the beginnings of the U.S., there are many variations of this idea and term. Other words that have been suggested for the same purpose are Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Washingtonian, Usonian ("Usonian" is an adaptation from Esperanto, apparently coined by Zamenhof), Uessian, U-S-ian, and Uesican (in approximately historical order from 1789 to 1939, according to Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage).

Other examples observed in the field:

• United States American
• US American
• USAian
• USAn or USan but not usually "Usan"
• Usanian

It should be noted that several of these terms have direct parallels in languages other than English:

• United Statesian directly parallels Spanish estadounidense and French Étatsunien.
• Usonian is derived from Usono, the name in Esperanto of the USA. Frank Lloyd Wright used it to describe one style of his architecture.
• Usanian is derived from the Ido word Usana.

In other parts of the world, there are also pejorative synonyms of the standard word for American. In Latin America, there is gringo (although that can also apply to the English), and, in several languages, local adaptations of Yankee. In the UK and Australia, the name septic tank or septic is sometimes used, based on rhyming slang for Yank. In Australia this is sometimes further shortened to seppo.

See also

• Alternate words for British
• Culture_of_the_United_States#Names

External link

• http://www.electriceditors.net/edline/vol4/4-9.txt