Thought
Are there any countries other than USA whose inhabitans have stolen the term for an inhabitan of an entire continent? In the US’s case, they’ve stolen the term for something often divided into two continents, South and North America, calling themselves simply Americans. You don’t hear Norwegians call themselves Europeans when you ask what country they come from; you don’t hear Japanese call themselves Asians when they mean to say they come from Japan; when someone from Zimbabwe wants to say they come from Zimbabwe, I don’t think they refer to themselves as “Africans”. So, is this peculiar to [US] Americans?
One counterexample would be Australians (except they might say “aussies”; I don’t know, perhaps that’s just something people say on TV), but in this case, it is justified, as the country is called Australia, not only the continent, and there are no other countries on the Australian continent anyway.
I’m sure this says something deep about cultures, but really, it’s just a thing I wonder about. I can’t be bothered to write some speculation about it up, lest it become a bad imitation of The Sokal Affair.
