They should be called United Statesians in English. I know États-Uniens is the official name in French.
What is it in other langages? How can we promote such use?
Why am I asking? The US administration is currently a disgrace on the world stage, and 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.
I used to work with a Canadian (From Vancouver, iirc) who used to emphasize “North American” when people made the wrong assumption. I guess it makes sense once the focus is on region/continent instead of country.
Also Canadian. Europeans are weird about this. They’ve always been Americans to us and it doesn’t refer to the continent.
This may be a proximity thing. A word can have a different meaning in context, and when the context spans a continent-length border, it can be easy to see it as a global default.
Take the example of the word “Asian”: An Australian using the term (advisedly, because it’s often (mis)used or interpreted as a pejorative) is probably talking about someone from South East Asia. A Brit using the same word usually means someone from the Indian subcontinent.
I realise there’s no border proximity with that example, but if you consider immigration and the percentage of population each Asian group makes up in each place, that physical proximity is why the word means what it does where it does.