Home > American

As many people from the various nations throughout the New World consider themselves to be "Americans," some think the common usage of "American" to refer to only people from the United States should be avoided in international contexts where it might cause confusion. Some find the use of "American" to refer to the United States offensive, as tending to disregard the existence of other New World nations. Many alternative neologisms to "American" have been proposed to refer to the United States, but they have failed to garner widespread acceptance. See Alternative words for American for more information.

While the use of "American" to refer to people and places in other nations of the Americas was long fairly common in the United States, this use has declined in recent generations, to the point that some people are uncomfortable with this usage.

In Spanish, the normal term is estadounidense (literally United-Statesian). In the Iberoamerican countries, the use of "americano" to describe a US citizen could be considered politically incorrect and culturally aggressive, because the word in Spanish habitually includes the inhabitants of the entire New World. In Portuguese, both in Portugal and BrazilThis article is about Brazil, the country. For other article subjects named Brazil see Brazil (disambiguation). The Federative Republic of Brazil Republica Federativa do Brasil in Portuguese) is the largest and most populous country in South America., the term estadunidense is growing and it is considered more appropriate than the common term Norte-Americano (literally North American), as from a geographic view North AmericaNorth America is the third largest continent in area and the fourth ranked in population. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocea includes MexicoThis article is about the country Mexico. For other meanings, see Mexico (disambiguation The United Mexican States or Mexico ( Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos or Mexico regarding the use of the variant spelling Mejico see section The name below) is a co and CanadaCanada historically the Dominion of Canada is the second-largest, and northernmost, country in the world. It is a decentralized federation of 10 provinces and 3 territories, governed as a constitutional monarchy, and formed in 1867 through an act of Confe in addition to the United States.

The American race is an obsolete 19th-century racialThis article is about race as a concept of intraspecies classification. For the many types of competitive sport, see racing. FBI identifies fugitives by photographs, physical features, occupation, nationality, and race. From left to right, the FBI identif classification referring to the various peoples now called Native AmericansNative Americans (also Indians Aboriginal Peoples American Indians First Nations Alaskan Natives or Indigenous Peoples of America are the indigenous inhabitants of Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. This term compri, also historically called the "red" race, although that latter term is generally considered derogatory.

The term American is also used to identify a type of railroad steam locomotive. In the Whyte notation, an American locomotive is a type 4-4-0.