"This generous, patriotic, and enlightened people will take into their own hands the case of America Vespucci. They will procure for her that home which she desires among us. They will do ail that Congress is forbidden to do, and infinitely more than she asks or desires, and demonstrate to the world that the name of America, our country’s name, is dear to us all, and shall be honored, respected, and cherished in the person of the interesting exile from whose ancestor we derive the great and glorious title."

I, personally, read into those final lines that she was, indeed, given land, but from private donors.

> I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made.

No, it IS weaselly. Unless there is any substance to the argument at all, it's like saying "it has been argued that the earth is flat."

Maybe say "it has been argued without evidence" like journalists do /s

Nothing is as bad as "it has been argued" other than "it could be argued."

England is not the UK.

There was a time when "Black" was considered offensive and "African-American" was the generally-approved nomenclature. You seem to be implying that the "-American" pattern emerged as some sort of white conspiracy to paint everyone else as less American, but my understanding is that the opposite is true. Language and social preferences evolve over time, and that one has simply come and gone as the "correct" option of the day.

As a generally "white" person (of roughly western European descent), I will happily use any set of labels that keeps people from glaring at me. I feel pretty strongly that unpleasant language is a symptom of prejudice, not a cause. If changing words could change hearts and minds, I think we would have seen it happen by now.

The main reason people call themselves $HYPHENATION-americans is because they want some free stuff from the government for their particular $HYPHENATION

> since the name "America" clash with how they name the continent (America)

There are two continents, "North America" and "South America". To refer to the whole, you pluralize it as "the Americas".

As an American, I believe continents are a useless fiction that don’t properly account for how land is actually divided on the crust of the Earth and disregards small continental areas which ought to be accounted for if we’re to believe Europe and Asia are different continents. There are also two different six continent models taught in the world in addition to the seven continent model I was taught: Europe and Asia as Eurasia and North and South America as the Americas.

Personally I don’t care what you call us in other languages, but in English it’s just “Americans”.

good point

That's fine. You have your terminology and others have theirs.

It might (not) surprise you to learn that what I call Cyprus is called "Zypern" by Germans and there are a lot more copper related names for the place.

Closer to my home, what I call London is Londres in France and London in German. The city in question was named by a bunch of what would become Italians (Romans) - Londinium was named by a murderous bunch of colonial invaders.

I have insinuated an awful lot from your comment and "replied" to those insinuations as best I can.

I am somebody and I use the term America routinely to describe the USA and the term Americas for the entire continent. North America is US + CA and Southern America is Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay and ... oh there are rather a lot more. There is also Central America which is the countries that join the north to the south.

I get that you have an axe to grind about which America is which and who owns which name. I have some sympathy for Brazil getting pissed off about Amazon (the company) too.

I try to understand all points of view - its quite interesting.

The source of this terminology difference is that continents have no universal definition, only societal convention. Romance language–speaking countries tend to teach the six‐continent model with a single America, whereas Anglophone countries like the UK, Australia, and USA teach the seven‐continent model with North and South America. Neither side is wrong, since there’s no universally agreed upon idea of what the continents are, only convention (and neither convention matches the current geological consensus either). The equivalent term to Spanish “America” in English is “the Americas,” not “America.” My Brazilian friends consider themselves “American,” but I’ve never met a Canadian who did.

The name of our country is the United States of America. Sometimes we call it the US, or United States, sometimes we call it America.

Much as yours is called la República Federativa do Brasil, which you call Brasil for short. Do you ever call it the RF I wonder? Real question, I have no idea.

Whatever you call America, the country, in your language, that's up to you. The Chinese call us 美國, the few of us aware of that are not even slightly bothered by it. Your language, your rules.

You have no right, and no ability, to dictate to Americans how we refer to ourselves and our nation, in our main (but not official) language. We do not care what your name for us is, and we do not care at all what you think about how we refer to ourselves.

For the record, in America we do not think of the Americas as one continent, but rather, two. So Brazilians, as we style you, are South American. Canadians, Mexicans, and Americans, are North Americans. If we need for some reason to refer to the people of both continents we might say "people of the Americas" but this doesn't come up much, just as we might say "Old Worlders" to refer to the megacontinent of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The chip you carry around on your shoulder does you no credit at all. The notion that because we use a word in the name of our nation to refer to ourselves in some way denigrates the other inhabitants of the two continents, North and South America, which happen to share that word with the name of our nation...

That is 100% a you problem, not an us problem, and not a US problem. Get over it. Or don't.

Karnak, the ancien site in Egypt and Carnac, the ancient site in Brittany

I agree it seems unlikely. On the other hand there’s a reference to “ the current (fifth) edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary” and that seems to be from 2016 - so perhaps the article was mostly done in the late eighties / early nineties but got some updates here and there.

It’s an encyclopedia entry. It’s continuously updated, like Wikipedia. But the bulk of the text would have been from 1991/1988.