Asklemmy

This probably isn’t helpful for referring to all Americans but in the U.S., we use whatever state/regjon within the United States a person is from as the demonym. So, someone from California would be Californian, someone from Texas would be Texan. For a regional example, someone from the Northeast would be a New Englander.

For most of the history of the Republic, the states viewed themselves sort of like EU countries do now: independent states in America that united. It probably wasn’t until the World Wars that it changed.

It can get more complicated, unfortunately. Native Americans would probably use their tribal name instead of the state, for instance. But that’s why we don’t have a demonym and everyone has resorted to USian or USAian on message boards.

Gringo and yankee are both fine. However, it's most correct to refer to people from the USA by their birth state.

Being from the USA, I can confidently say “Yankee” is a term that is fairly neutral in meaning. People from the South states use it to refer to basically any American not from the South, and I get the sense people from the UK use it to refer to anyone from the USA.

In my experience, “Gringo” seems to be a term used by Spanish-speakers (even ones from North and South America) to refer to English speakers who think they’re better than everyone, so it appears to be a term with negative connotations

It's a weird lacuna of the English language, there's no official word for estadounidense.

I'm USAian. (just identifying for this thread, i don't call myself that)

would "gringo" include Black USAians? Asian USAians? Spain-born USAians?

from my understanding of "gringo", that doesn't seem to include non-white USAians. Most English monolingual USAians think that means "white guy".

a lot of gen z USAians might not know the word Yankee as a term for USAians. if speaking to them, you might have to explain it's not the baseball team.

maybe it's better to stick with "USAians". it's never been used but it's easy to figure out. other possible choices are:

• Statesians
• USAliens
• USAmericans
• Staters
• Stater Tots (re: tater tots)
• USticles

better yet, call each of us by the state we're each from. that's the safest bet. you know all our 50 state names right? and their official demonyms? 🤣 kidding

Yankistani.

I prefer the formal name in spanish of estadounidense (united-statistian) to American.

Burgerlander

Not too sure about gringo but I know yankee is correct, I hear that one a lot from folks I know in the UK.

There's some weird linguistic drift where in the southern US, we call northerners yankees, even though in the rest of the world we're all yankees. Now I'm curious how that started.

In America, yankee means people from a particular part of America. But we use it here in Australia to mean any American. It's especially fun when people from the south (that is…the south of the country America, not from the continent of South America) take offence at the term IMO.

We also use "seppo" which is an Australian shortening slang of "septic", which is rhyming slang (of the kind used in both Australia and London, England) that comes via "septic tank" via "yank".

Gringo seems strange to me. I thought that was a predominantly Latin American term for white people, and would apply equally well to Americans as Canadians as Australians as (of particular relevance to someone from Spain) English…but only the white of each, so it would seem to me it shouldn't work as synonymous with "American" because it excludes African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. But I'm not Spanish or Latin American, so I might just be misunderstanding the word.

Edit: what yank means depending on where you are (allegedly):

Unfortunately the USAians are so dominant in the region of the Americas that they've coopted the term American for most people. My Columbian friend hates when we refer to USAians as Americans because he says "hey we were here first" 😆. But unfortunately that's the way it is.

Yanks or Yankee Doodles is what we used to call them but they get rather upset these days when you call them that. I wouldn't call them gringos because it just sounds unnatural for a Brit to say that seriously.

Burros como o caralho is Portuguese for USAians.

It translates to something like dumb as fuck.