I’m really disappointed at how it went down, because I was actually at first really enjoying the discussion of linguistics and geography and how they intersect.

I think it really went south once dessalines piped up. Which…shouldn’t be a surprise, I suppose.

Oh, incidentally I also reported dessaline’s comment. Like you say, they were pretty obviously behaving in an offensive manner. I figure if the mods are removing my comments (and giving me a weeklong ban!!), they had for sure better remove dessaline’s, which is far more directly offensive with its completely unfounded accusation of white supremacy and calling you illiterate.

In relation to the claims they make about America not being used prior to the 20th century…even their own article proves them wrong.

For some thirty years prior to 1898, while the adjective ‘American’ has been in general use, the noun ‘America’ has been extremely rare,

it says. Remembering that this is a thread specifically about the demonym. So the adjective has been in widespread use since at least the 19th century, despite what our fascistic friend says.

Not that the claim made in that article is exactly correct. One of my favourite books (and certainly my favourite pre-20th-century text) uses some derivation of “America” no fewer than 7 times, two of which are nouns. Not exactly an obscure text, and not one with any reason to be strongly biased in favour of America. Still, that at only serves as proof that the claim in the article is wrong by at least 1 year, so it’s not the most damning. Not as damning as the fact that the article given in evidence that “American” only exists because imperialism (never mind the bleeding obvious…America as a country, and indeed all the various other countries of the Americas, only exist because of imperialism) specifically states that “American” existed prior.

I actually wanted to reach out to the mods and ask what’s up before posting this. But Lemmy’s lack of a modmail feature means when I want to contact mods, I have to direct message them individually. And it looks like all the mods of that community are inactive, with the most recent one only having been active 2 months ago. So I wouldn’t even know who to reach out to.

I propose a way to fix all this shit:

• Rename NA to Tacoland
• Rename SA to Empanadia
• Rename USA to Northern Mexico
• Rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of the Mexicos and Cuba”

Done! Now nobody fights over Vespucci’s name.

My earliest strongly negative experiences on mass social media (as opposed to niche social media like small forums about specific topics) was on 9gag, before I joined Reddit. The Latin Americans complaining about the use of the term “America” to refer to the country of America were the most arrogant, rude arseholes I had come across. A close second was when they would whinge about the term “soccer”. Even the poms don’t usually bother about that one, unless you’re specifically using that term to call them out.

I do not. That was the whole point of my multiple comments in the original thread. America is the correct noun, in English, to refer to the United States of America.

We can get into definitions of continents if you like. I accept that people from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking backgrounds primarily talk about a 6 continent model consisting of America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. I can also accept that because there’s no real solid definition of a continent, it’s impossible to say that this is wrong per se. I will say that I find it an absolutely baffling grouping to use, and that I myself prefer 6 continents consisting of North and South America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica; it makes no sense to me that someone could group the Americas while considering Afroeurasia three continents: to me, either an isthmus like Panama and Suez separates continents, or it does not, and it’s weird to split over Suez but not Panama, and even weirder not to merge Eurasia who have no physical separation. (And IMO, once you start separating Europe and Asia, it becomes hard not to justify separating Arabia and India, if we’re trying to keep a logical definition.) But continents aren’t especially logical. In most of the English-speaking world, the 7 continent model dominates. We talk about North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. Those are the 7 continents, and while you can disagree with them (as I do!), in most conversations you’re just being difficult if you bring up that disagreement in anything more than a very lighthearted way.

The use of the demonym America stems in part from that. Once you reject the notion that “America” is a single continent, it becomes far easier to understand that the demonym “American” can’t refer to people from two continents, and so it’s very normal to use it to refer to just one country. That country being the United States of America. It’s pretty normal to refer to countries by their short form. Czechia a few years back started a big campaign push to specifically ask people to call them that, rather than always using the formal “Czech Republic”. Australia rarely gets referred to as the “Commonwealth of Australia”, and the fact that Canada is officially “the Dominion of Canada” is rarely even acknowledged by official texts these days. Amusingly, America’s southern neighbour has an equally valid claim on the name “United States”, since Estados Unidos Mexicanos translates to United Mexican States, or, roughly, United States of Mexico. Latin Americans often get upset at this because in Spanish, the demonym is ‘estadounidense’, which roughly translates to ‘United Statesian’. But that’s not a word that exists in English. It’s not especially logical even in Spanish, given that logically speaking, estadounidense could also refer to Mexicans. But words are defined by their usage, and in common usage that word unambiguously means American. The same is true in English. American unambiguously, in English, means person or thing from the United States of America. It’s silly to get upset by that.