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Comment by mic47 | Hacker News Reader

Isn't Brazil in America?

America is a commonly-used short form for the United States of America, as it is in this case. (Edit to add: Actually, it's even more specific than that: American is the commonly accepted demonym for citizens of the United States, which is how it's used here.) To refer to the landmasses including North and South America, the term the Americas is typically used.

So maybe now can understand the undertone of the famous phrase "America for the Americans" of the Monroe Doctrine

The funny thing about it, is that at the time the name "United States of America" came to be, "America" was the full continent and the name of the new nation simply reflected the fact that it was a union of states in that continent. I think the name "America" for the country got stronger because people from there were calling them selves "Americans" for a lack of better demonym.

Hard to believe 'United Statesians' didn't get more traction :)

Actually, in Portuguese and Spanish there is the word "estadounidense" that is basically "Unitedstatizen". But this is a formal word, used only in books (and Wikipedia). At least in Brazil, we use "americano" in the day by day for both someone born in the USA or in the continent (which is still called "America", no plural).

> America is a commonly-used short form for the United States of America

Perhaps someone from Americas - America can comment how common this is in their country?

That's certainly fair (and to be clear, when using Americas in English, the phrase is the Americas, including the definite article), though it would also be fair to restrict it to the English language, as names change depending on the the language. For example, Hungary in English is Ungarn in German (Deutsch) and Magyarország in Hungarian (Magyar). I'm not going to insist that Germans should use Hungary or Magyarország auf Deutsch.

As a first approximation using Google Translate, American translates as americano in both Portuguese and Spanish, while Mexican and Brazilian, for example, translate as mexicano and brasileño (Spanish) and brasileiro (Portuguese), respectively. I didn't find a way to limit this to particular locales as would be appropriate. These types of things can be subtle, and I'm interested to hear from good sources that can provide more insight.

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