1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

United States or America?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Songbird, Jan 11, 2021.

  1. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    After reading something yesterday I realized I've never once, when asked where I'm from or where I live, replied with "America" ... but instead have always said "the United States" or just "U.S." even though the official title of our country is the United States of America. It was a weird realization.

    Anyone else call it the U.S./United States or is your first answer always America?

    Interesting thought experiment if nothing else.

    The Congress renamed the country the day I was born, 195 years earlier: Congress renames the nation “United States of America”
     
  2. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    It was the Schwarzenegger video in which he talked about the importance of "America" that got me thinking about my own experience with that word.
     
  3. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    What if the guy who realized this was the New World was named something other than Amerigo Vespucci? We could be the United States of De Soto or Drake.
     
  4. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Although the United States of Zzyzx would be pretty cool.
     
    OscarMadison, TigerVols and maumann like this.
  5. Driftwood

    Driftwood Well-Known Member

    United States of Erikson
     
    sgreenwell and maumann like this.
  6. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

    If TigerVols was named emperor (and what a glorious day that would be!) I would dissolve all the states and municipal governments and have two governments, Federal and county. Each county would have three elected reps “sent” to a national parliament (meeting completely online) and the counties’ borders would be population based and would be altered every census by a computer to keep them all pretty much the same size.
     
    maumann likes this.
  7. Twirling Time

    Twirling Time Well-Known Member

    Since the Vikings came first, we could be the United States of Thor.
     
    OscarMadison likes this.
  8. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    To answer the OP, I have used all three when traveling abroad, though I’ve used “the United States” the least (probably just for brevity).

    My experience speaking with many Germans, Australians and Southeast Asians while in Thailand was that they mostly called it America. While traveling in Central America, people mostly referred to us as the U.S.
     
  9. RARist

    RARist Member

    My response to the reply "America" would be, "Can you be more specific?"
    As in North? South? Central?
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2021
  10. Mngwa

    Mngwa Well-Known Member

    Actually when I've been traveling most people don't ask where you're from they just say, are you an American? I will probably say the US
     
  11. Dog8Cats

    Dog8Cats Well-Known Member

    United States or U.S.. Far prefer United States/U.S. over America. As someone above said, "America" encompasses the rest of North and all of Central and South.

    I kind of don't like it when the Canadian radio station I stream refers to the U.S. as America. But that's their choice.

    Don't like it when someone from the U.S. is called the "first American to [do something]."
     
    RARist likes this.
  12. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    USA! USA!
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page