Proud to be an American

If you are from the U.S. you probably learned in elementary school that there are seven continents in the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, North America, and South America. You probably took this information at face value and never questioned it. It turns out that there is no one definition for what a continent is, and people all around the world learn different things in school. As it turns out, people in Latin America generally learn that what we refer to as North and South America - they refer to as one continent, America.

Which brings us to the debate I've had with people from various parts of Latin America for years, which you may have experienced yourself. Why do us citizens from the U.S. call ourselves "Americans?" I become passionately involved in this debate, and I will defend that term until someone changes the subject. Even if it's my Colombian friend's birthday and she insists she was taught that North America was comprised of the U.S. and Canada, Mexico was part of Central America, and then changes everything by saying that America is really one continent.

Really what this comes down to is that the name of our country is the United States of America. Goodness knows why our Founding Fathers (and Mothers? Who am I kidding, they surely didn't have a say in the matter.) chose that name, but así es (that's the way it is). What this really comes down to is a linguistic problem - Mexico is called the United States of Mexico, and its citizens are referred to as Mexicans. Colombia is the Republic of Colombia, and its citizens are Colombians. Of course, someone from Latin America may rebut that we were arrogant in the first place to choose the name of the continent as the name of our country, but what can we do about that now? There was probably a good reason behind it at the time - like, you know, these were the first independent states in America. And then the name stuck.

I am often referred to here as norteamericana - which profoundly bothers me. North America refers to not only the U.S., but several other countries, and I see it as more arrogant to refer to myself as a "North American."

So I will continue to call myself American in English, estadounidense or gringa in Spanish, and any host of other words in other languages.

Have you ever had this debate before? What's your take on it? What is your perception of how other people view this debate around the world?