When I worked in Chile in 1977, somebody asked me where I was from. I answered “I’m an American.” I was shocked to see his hurt face. He responded “We are Americans, too.” That had never occurred to me before.
In the early 1960’s my high school Spanish teacher said many people living in Central and South America, considered themselves Americans. Your colleague though of himselve as an American and he was right.
I get that, but it really isn’t about “feeling superior” by calling ourselves by the general term “American”.
It is about, what else can we call ourselves?
Unitedstatesians? United’s? Statesians?
In many ways our national name is poor, so we have to use the best word in this long phrase.
Meanwhile all those other Latinos….have a unique national name that does not include “America”.
Yes, Latinos seem to be most concerned by this. Some would like us to use a form of ‘United Statesian’ instead. But there is a United States of Brazil and for a time Mexico styled itself the United States of Mexico and now is the United Mexican States. But as has been pointed out, we are the only nation to have America in its name.
I’ve tried to make that distinction before, but it’s hard to
think of something else to say.
“American” rolls off the tongue so easily, it’s hard to pass
up. “I’m from the USA” doesn’t roll off quite so well, but I
think it does avoid offending the other North, Central, and
South American people.