Talk:American

The term American.

A better synopsis?

A person of the Americas, as defined chiefly in Latin America. A citizen of the United States of America, as defined chiefly in Anglo-America. CaribDigita (talk) 18:40, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

But this is the English-language wiki, regarding an English word. If it's defined differently in Latin America and Anglo-America, by definition, the latter should take precedence. Twin Bird (talk) 16:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, this is the English-language Wikipedia; not uniquely for the United States (of America :S). By preferring the USA's usage you are putting aside the opinion of the British, Canadian, Belizean and other Latin American people who actually speak English as their main language. --Isacdaavid (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's not just US-English usage, but in British, Canadian, Indian, and Caribbean English usage also, and in many other countries where English is widely spoken. A few native English speakers living in Latin American countries don't change what is common usage in English speaking countries around the world. - BilCat (talk) 03:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Guyana speaks English and is in America. Guylaen (talk) 03:24, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 14 January 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Almost unanimous consensus that there is no primary topic here, between Americans, United States, and The Americas. (non-admin closure)  — Amakuru (talk) 10:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

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American → American (disambiguation)American (disambiguation) – This page is currently clearly a disambiguation page. American should redirect to United States, as per WP:COMMONNAME, and to match the plural article Americans. This would also save tens of thousands of undisambiguated nationality links in tens of thousands of articles, current and to come. Softlavender (talk) 07:12, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support as nominator, per my rationale above. Softlavender (talk) 07:15, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose - Americans and United States are separate articles, either of which is a very plausible target when someone searches for/links to American. Realistically, American (word) is also a likely primary target. Without a single, primary target, this is rightly a disambiguation page (and it's self-evident that it doesn't have one - of the first two people to comment, the first apparently believes United States is the most likely target, the second would guess it's Americans, and in all likelihood the third is gonna favour redirecting to The Americas. Note that WP:COMMONNAME has absolutely nothing to say relevant to what this article should be titled, except perhaps to support the status quo, so it's unclear why it's linked as an argument. WilyD 10:35, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's unusually for a country's adjective to redirect to the country's article. See British, French, German, Mexican, etc. Rob984 (talk) 16:30, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per Rob984 -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 07:22, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
• Comment This seems to me to already be a contradictory misnomer type subject. Amerigo Vespucci was an explorer of south America. GregKaye 07:25, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Huh?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose: Does not comport with our usual practice (see examples given by Rob984), and that's before we get into the fact that it has multiple meanings ("of or relating to the United States", "of or relating to the Americas", "of or relating to the North American colonies of Great Britain, before and during the American Revolution", etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Could refer to the U.S., but just as likely (maybe more so) to American people (or the Americas). Zarcadia (talk) 13:45, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per Rob984's comment. CookieMonster755 (talk) 03:56, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. The global consensus is fairly clear, except a handful of curious exceptions (Canadian comes to mind). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:10, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. "American" is very confusing to non-Americans. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:08, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - dude, Norwegian doesn't redirect to Norway. Red Slash 03:58, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"US-amerikanisch" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect US-amerikanisch. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 May 13#US-amerikanisch until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:31, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Suggest moving the order of definitions

As a birth-citizen of the United States who loves geography, I am frustrated by the hegemony of ignorance that my fellow citizens take with them whenever they travel, eroding the simple concepts of geography and politics that the rest of the world has defined.

By the numbers, more people in America live OUTSIDE of the United States than inside. By simple math, the first definition of American should be someone who lives in the Americas, not someone who lives in the United States. Guylaen (talk) 08:30, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 20 March 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 15:41, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

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American → American (disambiguation)American (disambiguation) – This should pretty self-evidently be a primary redirect towards Americans. Most of the major topics in the disambiguation page use American as an adjective because of their relation to the American people. A number of the singular variants of other countries' demonyms redirect to the plural, including Canadian, Pakistani, Nigerian, and New Zealander; ideally, this should be standardized as much as is feasible. Ladtrack (talk) 06:05, 20 March 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. 1isall (talk | contribs) 12:47, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:DPT, this argument has an obvious problem with clickstreams showing that readers just don't click that link often. In February, we saw 2,002 user views of this list, but could only identify 393 clicks to the proposed primary topic - which is <20%. Even in the body of all clickstreams (1259), the spread is just ~31%. Even in the body of all identified clickstreams (845), it's just ~46.5%. Even if we were to assume that literally all filtered clickstreams correspond to this usage, which would be entirely unrealistic, it would still be just ~64%.

I don't know why it would be self-evident that we need to short-circuit readers to somewhere where they're not generally going in the first place.

The other examples are not necessarily completely comparable, and they are definitely not above reproach - Talk:Canadian (disambiguation) shows numerous contentious discussions over the years. --Joy (talk) 07:14, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

This isn't so much a usage-based argument as that it's obviously the correct thing to do. Americans are nationals of the United States; a single one is called an American. Per WP:PLURALPT, the singular and plural can have different targets, like with friend vs Friends or Peanut vs Peanuts, but it would require a pretty strong alternate primary topic. An obvious one for nationalities is if there is a language of the same name; for instance, I wouldn't support Italian going to Italians because there's also a language called Italian. Of course, there isn't a language called American. All of the other topics are either not actually called American or not significant enough to challenge Americans for the primary topic except for the indigenous peoples articles. I actually would support a hatnote for that on the Americans page, but if it isn't a strong enough contender to dislodge Americans from the primary topic, why would it stop American? Ladtrack (talk) 16:07, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Sure, but it's similarly obvious that American is the adjective for America, meaning the country and the continent, so it's not about just people but a variety of other applicable aspects. Indeed, we see that in the clickstreams, as the second-most clicked meaning is the country, then there's a meta article about the word, the continent, language, etc.

The Italian language isn't the only reason we disambiguate that adjective, the same thing happens there - clickstreams currently show the language, the people, the country and the cuisine, plus the huge filtered block. In this case the references to the language are far less common in this short form, so the mapping isn't 1:1, but it's still generally similar. --Joy (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't really do articles for adjectives, since it is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary. Strictly speaking, half of the top entries shouldn't be there because there's only supposed to be an entry if the subject is actually called that. Nobody actually calls the United States American. America, yes, which is why it links there, but not American. That's why the actual entry says "something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America", which implies the actual entry is not United States itself. The link is probably fine, but that doesn't mean the country article should be weighted as though it was an actual entry. Americas is basically exactly the same situation. Among the other two high-up ones, American (word) is an interesting etymology article but probably not important enough to contest primary topic against a nationality with 330 million people, and American ancestry is relatively niche and again not nearly prominent enough compared to Americans. Ladtrack (talk) 21:42, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

But these are actual entries, because they're valid mentions and the clicks clearly demonstrate that the readers are looking for them. The ambiguity is palpable :) --Joy (talk) 22:03, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Oppose mainly per the clickstreams argument. Most people searching American are simply not trying to get to the article on Americans (which makes sense as one would expect a person to add an s in that case). While "Americans" is clearly referring to individuals from America (of course there is ambiguity over what America means in that context, but that's not for here) while "American" as a much broader meaning. The biggest ones that come to mind are the article literally titled American (word), American English which is often just called "American", American Airlines, commonly referred to as just "American". "American" simply carries a different meaning than "Americans", and most people do correctly distinguish between these, leading to "Americans" (or something else) being searched when trying to get to that article (25.13% of visits to "Americans" come from a search, 1.48% come from the "American" page) and "American" mostly being used by people trying to get to other articles. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparlay$\lor$investigateᛅ} 14:17, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per the clickstreams data. American people doesn't seem to be the primary topic here. {{GearsDatapacks|talk|contribs}} 15:11, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Remove Teams

the article is about what American means. Sports is irrelevant in this context.

It this stays, then there should be an entry per county.

There is Club America from Mexico, America de Medellín, and many more. Darkefra~enwiki (talk) 01:07, 13 April 2026 (UTC)