What do foreigners think of the United States of America?

[PBBN43]

insomniac17 said:

Netyaroze said:

insomniac17 said:

I personally disagree with this. The name of the country is the United States of America. The name of Canada is Canada. The name of Mexico is Mexico. Only one of these has America in it, and that is the US. Canadians, Mexicans, and Americans. It is not out of arrogance that we use the term American, but because the name of our country contains America. What would you recommend we use instead?

Here some alternatives to american: Unitian, Statian,Usaian. Dont go around and steal the name of a continent just for yourself.

Great! Now here's what you do. Go convince the rest of the world to use those terms. I did not choose the term, but I use it because that is what is commonly accepted; just the same as everyone else. If you don't like it, change it. Get people to change the word that they use. If you do that, then we can all be proud that the term American can be applied to not just any single country, but to any person living in North or South America.

To blame citizens of the US for using the term American is absurd not only because America is in the name of our country, but also because none of us chose it. It has been around longer than any of us, and the rest of the world uses it too.

America is NOT the name of the country. It's part of the name, in reference to the continent. Up untill the US' indepence in 1776 (and for a few more decades too), there's not a single written mention of the usage of the word "America" as the name of the country. It only happened after the US selected its name, so it wasn't originally intended for the US to be called "America".