From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term “yankee” or “gringo” rather than “american” cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    This probably isn’t helpful for referring to all Americans but in the U.S., we use whatever state/regjon within the United States a person is from as the demonym. So, someone from California would be Californian, someone from Texas would be Texan. For a regional example, someone from the Northeast would be a New Englander.

    For most of the history of the Republic, the states viewed themselves sort of like EU countries do now: independent states in America that united. It probably wasn’t until the World Wars that it changed.

    It can get more complicated, unfortunately. Native Americans would probably use their tribal name instead of the state, for instance. But that’s why we don’t have a demonym and everyone has resorted to USian or USAian on message boards.