Americans are all the inhabitants of the continent

This is the translation of an article that I wrote in Octuber, 2010. It is about my point of view on the habit of Spanish speakers to call people and things from the United States 'americanos' (American), when a correct name exists: estadounidenses (something like Unitedstaters).

Last week I attended the presentation of the Unitedstater Studies Institute (Instituto de Estudios Estadounidenses) in Bogota, Colombia, attracted by the posibility of getting to know something else about the United States, county which I like since my childhood and in which I have had the chance of living briefly somewhen. What attracted my attention the most was the name of the institute itself.

Its name is Unitedstater Studies Institute and not American like some others which exist in some Spanish-speaking countries. And I believe that  Unitedstater is the correct name for the people born and nationalized in the United States. Not American because that name belong to all the inhabitants of the continent, from  Kaffeclubben Island to the Land of Fire.

In 1507 the German cartogrpher Martín Waldseemüller drew the first world map in which the new continent was named America,  in honor of the Italian sailor and cartographer Americo Vespuccio. But it was the inhabitants of the 13 British Colonies that got independent from England who monopolized the name at the moment of writing their independence declaration to name a small territory of the current United States. They called themselves 'Representants of the United Satates Of America'. In 1823 the Unitedstater John Quincy Adams coined "America for the Americans", in the framework of the Monroe Doctrine, with the porpose of letting Europeans know that the United States belonged to the Unitedstaters. 

This, in my opinion,  inaccuracy is obvious in English language where the American name is used on regard to the Unitedstater issues, althought there have been some less-known and less-used variants in that language such as Unitedstater, Unitedstatesian, Columbian, Colonican or Appalacian.

Unitestaters should not be called North Americans either because the north part of the continent is also formed by Canada, Groenland and Mexico, if it is taken into account that the North American subcontinent extends southward as far as the isthmus of   Tehuantepec, making most of Mexico be in North America. Calling them North Americans is like calling Colombians only South Americans.

I do not want you to assume my position as an anti-United States  or anti-capitalist one. All of this is regarding to languages and History and not about Politics or Economy. I reiterate my liking for the Unitet States, its people, and its social and political organization, without taking into account the imperialist ways of some of its governments. I have lived and I hope to come back and even to live again in this great North American nation (it is North american but not exclusively).

So, the national name for the United States should be Unitedstaters and not American nor North American, and in no way gringos or yankies what has, extremely, a pejorative sense for them.