No Stupid Questions

I am thinking how it unjustly hurts people from the rest of the American continent.

Here in Canada, we call people from the USA "Americans". There's no confusion, and if you called a Canadian "American" they would correct you immediately. If you explained you meant it in reference to the continent of North America they would still insist that you don't. It may be technically correct, but it would be frowned upon. We appreciate your consideration, but the word is firmly their word, at least to us. "North American" would be fine, though.

There's literally no reason to. Colloquially, nobody thinks American refers to both continents, plus the other countries already have something else to call themselves to differentiate.

Note shat while États-uniens is sometimes used in French, it's not really used beside some left wing intellectual wanting to brag about America being the continent and sometimes sounds mildly anti American but not too much

While it's indeed a better word than American, one can also argue that USA aren't the only United States as a larger federation e.g United Mexican states so you can make the same argument about états uniens

Probably just need an executive order from the current U.S. president to rename the country "United States of Trump". Going forward citizens would be called Trumpians.

Google will happily go ahead and update Google Maps with the new name.

I say "US Americans" to differentiate while traveling, works well.

easy to say, easy to understand.

Realistically? The breakup/balkanization of the US. Which is a nonzero and growing possibility by the look of things here.

"USian" just sounds better and not horrid to me . Normalise calling them USians

Similarly in Spanish OP, we say estadounidense as the demonym for something from USA. We often use americano interchangeably though, but that gives room for confusion sometimes.

I think you should have posted this in Unpopular Opinions hah. I don't give much weight to it and, as long as everyone knows what you mean by American when you say it is fine, so I don't necessarily agree with your opinion that it hurts the rest of the continent. But as far as semantics go we both know the question is about as old as the country itself.

We're gonna get downvoted to hell. See you there :)

I mean, "Yanks" is right there.

Or "septics", if you wish to be politically correct.

/jk

Writer H. L. Mencken collected a number of proposals from between 1789 and 1939, finding terms including Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Usian, Washingtonian, Usonian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican, and United Stater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonyms_for_the_United_States

i definitely agree with the sentiment, but "USians" looks very awkward and "youessians" is even more awkard to say. i'd rather get rid of the name america altogether, both for the country and the two continents, and use indigenous names for everything instead of honoring someone involved in early colonization. granted there are many indigenous languages between both continents so finding something that works for and respects everyone might be difficult but if we could it's two birds with one stone

The only one country and citizen name used in Japan outside of very formal contexts is 'America' アメリカ. You will occasionally see 米 (bei = rice) used in some contexts, particularly with the kanji of another country as an abbreviation for things regarding those two countries (日米野球... Japanese-American baseball...). Finally, you have アメリカ合衆国 which is the formal name and used on paperwork and means something more like 'America peoples together country' somewhat literally, but stands in for the US of A. Technically, there's also 亜米利加 which is the old way to write it phonetically using kanji without really meaning something about the system of government or anything (it's just a me ri ka).

Each of the 50 states has a somewhat unique name, and residents of the state therefore have a unique demonym. Use those instead?

If that's too many names, Colin Woodward has identified 11 culturally-distinct nations in the US. That would actually promote a lot better understanding of why the country is the way it is. I'd be a Yankee.

Changing the collective name demonym Americans would be confusing during the transition, and for what benefit? Is this really a concern for residents of other countries in the Americas? Are Colombianos really scrambling to be called Americans?

Instead, I suggest taking Pres. Sheinbaum's suggestion, if you want to do something: Call the continent Mexican America. Everybody would know what you mean from context right away. No confusion, no need to get anybody else to play along.

There are bigger issues right now. We can't afford food and you want the administration to spend time taking away names? It's hypocritical. The administration you're trying to punish is doing exactly the same thing, moron. Begone.