this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term "yankee" or "gringo" rather than "american" cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?

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[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] Alice@beehaw.org 7 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

That Southern US usage dates back to at least the US civil war in the 1860s.

But yankee was used to refer to at least some people in what is now the US as early as the 1660s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I dunno how true it is, but I've heard it gets even more specific once you're in the north. I shared a map in another comment detailing the different meanings of it.

As for the etymology, apparently it goes back to Dutch settlers of New Netherlands, and may be connected to the name Janneke. It seems to have gone from being used by English settlers to Dutch settlers to being used in precisely the reverse at some point, and has at times meant either someone of English descent, of early Protestant descent, or other things.

It was used more generally by outsiders to refer to Americans as far back as the Revolutionary War (the song Yankee Doodle Dandy was originally making fun of Americans—macaroni being a sophisticated style of dress), so its history being used in that way actually predates the Civil War associations that I think many Americans would give it today.

So yeah, it really does have a fascinating linguistic history.

Also, weird…this is the second time in as many days I've had cause to look up Yankee Doodle Dandy.

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

As a Dutchie, I've heard it being an contraction of the names Jan and Kees, both are common names in Dutch

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, that was another one of the theories. Linguists seem pretty sure it has something to do with Dutch, but are in disagreement over exactly how it came to be. (The "Janneke" example I gave above being, according to what I read, a diminutive form of Jan.)

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] juli@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

Yankistani.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 12 hours ago

Usonian also works.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

If I want to come off as a pseudo-intellectual I call them Yankee for east-north and Dixie for south-west (but also Florida and the bible belt) and gringo for hispanic Americans. I don't know if any of those terms are really correct to use in that context and my definitions are entirely vibes-based.

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

I'd say leave east/west out of the Yankee/Dixie dichotomy you're imagining, because every single southeastern state was a slave state that supported the confederacy.

It also falls apart when you go west of the Mississippi River, which was (outside of Texas and California) mostly unincorporated territory during the time of the civil war and not a part of what would have been considered the union or the confederacy at that time.

Also don't refer to Hispanic Americans as "gringo" because that is a term used in Latin America to refer to people who are not Latin American.

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