Alternative words for American
There have been many attempts coin an adjective--specifically, a demonym--for United States nationals, as an alternative to American. More recently prevalent is the word Usian (pronounced "YOU-zhuhn"; SAMPA: 'yuZ@n]). Other attempts include Usanian, USAian, Usonian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisan, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Uessian, U-S-ian, Uesican, USAn, Usan, or rarely Columbian or Washingtonian. Mentions of these words have been around at least since the first half of the 20th century, but all of the variants are virtually unused.
Use of these terms has been practiced and advocated by some people to distinguish U.S. nationals from people living in other countries in the Americas. In practice, this is not necessary because American without any modifier (like South American) is well-understood to be a U.S. national and nobody else.
The concern on the part of advocates of these terms that motivates use of the word is that, since America is part of the names of both North America and South America, it follows in their logic that American ought to be understood to mean, "inhabitant of the Americas".
For advocates of the more recent Usian, this takes on political and historical significance because of various doctrines, including manifest destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, jingoism, imperialism, anti-communism, oil imperialism, and the Bush Doctrine. In the view of advocates of Usian, these doctrines have explicitly or implicitly or reputedly advocated explicit control of the Americas as well as other areas by the government of the United States. Therefore, people making other political statements about the United States, often use the term Usian to make a statement about Americans or some subset thereof.
Since various people have found American to be ambigious since the beginnings of the U.S., there are many variations of this idea and term. Other words that have been suggested for the same purpose are Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Washingtonian, Usonian ("Usonian" is an adaptation from Esperanto, apparently coined by Zamenhof; among its users was Frank Lloyd Wright), Uessian, U-S-ian, and Uesican (in approximately historical order from 1789 to 1939, according to Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage).
Other examples observed in the field:
- Usanian
- USAian
- USAn or USan but not usually "Usan"
It should be noted that several of these terms have direct parallels in languages other than English:
- United Statesian directly parallels Spanish estadounidense.
- Usonian is derived from Usono, the name in Esperanto of the USA.
- Usanian is derived from the Ido word Usana.
See also: Cultural imperialism, Ethnocentrism, Washingtonian