A posting recently showed up on my Facebook feed which exclaimed that “America
is a continent, not a country!” This posting then claimed that the continent of
America was further subdivided into North (Canada, US, Mexico), Central, and
South America, and that one could also define Latin America as “where romance
languages are spoken”.
Before I get to the main question, let me address a few problems with
this particular posting. First, all the pictures excluded Greenland and all the
islands in the Caribbean, but left in all the islands in northern Canada.
Second, there are portions of “Latin America” where languages other than romance
languages are spoken, such as Suriname where Dutch is spoken. The author was
being a bit sloppy in his presentation.
The Continent Question
The answer to what would seem to be a simple question of “how many
continents are there?” is actually quite complicated. There is an excellent
summary of this in Wikipedia (*1). I’m not going to try and replicate all that
article here but recommend that you read it if you are interested.
In summary, the answer depends on (1) where you live and what you have
been taught, and (2) whether you have a geological view of the world or a geopolitical
one. Thus, four, five, six, or seven are all valid answers depending on your
context. Most English-speaking countries as well as China, India, and several
other countries teach a 7-continent model with North American and South America
being separate as well as Europe and Asia being separate. Most other western
Europeans and Latin Americans have a 6-continent model with North America and
South America being combined. Those in eastern Europe, Russia and Japan have a different
6-continent model with Europe and Asia combined but North America and South
America separated.
The Olympic flag has five rings because the Olympics started in
non-English-speaking western Europe (a 6-continent model) but then they dropped
Antarctica since it was not populated.
For most in the USA (I’ll get to the country issue below), when we use
the term “The Americas” we are referring to both North America and South
America (note that the term “Americas” is plural!). And since the USA was
settled primarily by individuals from English-speaking countries of Europe who
hold to the 7-continent model, most in the USA still generally think of North America
and South America as two separate continents and they do not use the word “America”
to refer to a continent.
The Country Question
There are several components to the question, “What is the name of a
country?” We need to consider what the people in that country call their county
(which is in the native language of that country), and then what the English
translation of that name is. As an example, the official name of what we
generally know as “Egypt” is “Junhuriyah Misr al-Arabiyah” (this is the rough transliteration
of the words in Arabic). In English, this translates to “Arab Republic of Egypt”.
But by convention we drop off the portion before the “of” and simply call the
country, “Egypt”. There are a surprising number of countries whose full
official name follows a similar convention. Here are some which I looked up (if
you want to look up others, see (*2):
Commonwealth of
Australia
Federative Republic
of Brazil
People’s Republic of
China
The People’s Republic
of Bangla-Desh
Kingdom of Belgium
Republic of Cyprus
Kingdom of Denmark
French Republic
Federal Republic of
Germany
Hellenic Republic [Greece]
Republic of India
The Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan
United Mexican
States
Russian Federation
Republic of Suriname
Socialist Republic
of Vietnam
Note that in most cases we simply drop everything before the “of”, but
for some where that word does not appear, the shortened version of the name
appears earlier in the full official name (such as Russian Federation = Russia,
and United Mexican States = Mexico). Words such as “Republic”, Federation”, “Kingdom”,
or “Federal” are generally descriptive of the nature of the country’s political
system and, as you can see from the above examples, can be found in multiple
country names.
So, if we follow this same sort of naming convention what should we
call the USA? First, we need to determine the official name, i.e. what does the
country call itself. Here the simple answer is “United States of America”. This
term occurs in the preamble of the Constitution and is what we have used ever
since. Like all the other examples above, the terms before the “of” are
descriptive of the name of the country’s political system and we should drop
them to get the shortened version, i.e. “America”.
Areas of Possible Confusion
The root cause of any confusion is primarily with those individuals who
hold to a view of the continents that “America” is the name of a single
continent, i.e. those individuals from non-English-speaking western Europe,
Latin America, or those who may have their heritage from countries in those
areas.
While the individual who made the original Facebook posting (and there
have been many others like it that I have seen over the years) is showing
particular concern about the use of the word “America” for a country, there are
actually two continents (of the 4/5/6/7) where there could be confusion. The
other one is “Australia”. Is this the name of a continent or a country (short
for “Commonwealth of Australia”? And if someone says, “I’m Australian,” can
that be misinterpreted?
The continent of Australia can be interpreted in a number of ways. If
you are referring to only the landmass, i.e. following the coastline just like
the person who uses the term “America” to refer to a continent, then you are
leaving out the island of Tasmania, which is one of the states in the
Commonwealth of Australia. But if you then state that you need to include the islands
that are on the same tectonic plate, then you need to include New Guinea as
well. So no matter which definition you use for the continent of Australia, you
have an inconsistency with the country of [the Commonwealth of] Australia. And
yet I’ve never seen anyone who gets upset about the use of the word “Australia”
or “Australian” to apply to the country or citizens of that country.
And yet in the totally parallel case of using the word “America” to
refer to the “United States of America”, some people get quite upset. I even
ran across one video (*3) where the individual proposed that we need to change
the name of the USA to “Midnorthamerica”, which is a totally geographic name.
But interestingly the individual did not propose that Canada should be “Northnorthamerica”.
My Personal View
I’ve recognized for a long time that there are different views of how
many continents there are and that there are many individuals, especially from
other countries, who view “America” as the name of a continent and thus can be
confused when encountering individuals who use the word “America” as the name
of a country. When I am in the company of individuals who have these alternate
(and totally valid) views, I am careful to choose my words so as not to cause
confusion.
As an example, I volunteered for many years for AFS (American Field
Service) and had considerable contact with exchange students from other
countries who were here in the United States. When in their company I was
careful to not use the word “Americans” as a term to refer to individuals from
the [United States of] America, but to substitute “US Americans” so as not to
cause confusion.
I am also careful in these same types of circumstances to not use complicated
words (which an individual who has English as a second/third language may not know
how to translate), figures of speech (which may not translate very well, such
as “the red zone” which is a term from US football), or jokes which make use of
homonyms in many puns (which when translated to another language are no longer
homophones, such as “you can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish”). When
speaking to individuals from other language backgrounds, I also deliberately speak
in simple sentences and speak slower than when speaking to totally US
audiences. I need to consider the listener(s).
I do not see this as something to get upset about or to denigrate
others who may hold alternate views. We should also be aware that things that
we take for granted may cause confusion for others and to take into account the
background that others may have.
Notes:
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