this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Awkward, stilted, and a little holier-than-thou.
Mexico American - doesn’t make sense
Mexican American - American whose origins lie primarily in Mexico
Canada American - doesn’t make sense
Canadian American - American whose origins lie primarily in Canada
Frankly, I think most Canadians would probably feel insulted if you addressed them as Canada Americans. They don’t want to be tainted by association with us.
Mexicans and Canadians have those demonyms, so no need to worry for them.
I've seen Canadians being okay with being called "North Americans", when discussing something impacting both Canada and the USA, so it seems in this situations it's fine by team. Canada Americans would indeed be strange.
The UK British example is interesting.
Not British, so hopefully I'm not butchering this up.
UK is Great Britain (so Scotland, England, Wales) + Northern Ireland.
UK British in opposition to UK Northern Irish makes limited sense because both demonyms are enough to see who's who (British vs Northern Irish). And if you want to go deeper, you can use Scottish, English, Welsh.
To have a situation similar to America would be to have the English using British to only qualify themselves, disregarding Scottish and Welsh people.
Ah, indeed, it's more clear. In summary, there should be another name than "British Isles" to describe that archipelago. Interestingly enough, it seems like schools books in Ireland indeed do that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_British_Isles#Republic_of_Ireland
So, if we were to use this logic for the USA, there may be another demonym to use? Spanish has “Estadounidense” (https://dle.rae.es/estadounidense), which in English would be something like UnitedStatesian, or USian