William Safire, revered linguist and thinker

- by Frank Shiell

commend / condemn

THUMBS UP: for the late great writer-wordsmith William Safire who finally, albeit futilely, explored the fact the United States AKA “America” and its inhabitants have no name…suggesting “United Statsians”.  Referring to “them” them can be awkward, whether in writing or conversation.  Therefore, for example, Spaniards, out of necessity to clarify, say “yanquis”; Mexicans use the term “gringos”. In both countries, without even reading Safire, they default to the term ”estadounidenses” (United Statesians).  In truth we are all Americans/Americanos, from Canada to Argentina (“North”, “Central”, and “South”).  Read the full essay below in Safire’s “On Language” column in the New York Times.

and THUMBS DOWN: to our historic leaders for failing to give this place its own name – unlike those of our fellow North Americans in Canada and México.

Here’s mentor Bill:

The New York Times - June 29, 1986 edition

On Language;  Who Is an ‘American’?

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

NOT LONG AGO (A euphemism for ”11 months ago, but time flies”), a request was made of readers to submit substitutes for the word American, meaning ”citizen of the United States.” The reason was plain: other residents of the Americas were taking umbrage at this linguistic imperialism. Our persnickety good neighbors to the south are Americans, too; if we call them ”South Americans,” should we not refer to ourselves as ”North Americans”? And if we do, would we thereby merge with Canada and Mexico by accident?

To open up the possibilities for a new moniker all our own, the Gringo Division of the Lexicographic Irregulars was formed. More than 280 submissions were received. That was nearly a year ago. As Dr. Lloyd I.S. Zbar of Glen Ridge, N.J., writes, ”I have not read anymore in your column about the use of American. Have you reached a position?” (One position is clear: anymore, in the sense of amount used by the noodging Dr. Zbar - meaning ”anything additional” – should be written as two words. In the negative sense, meaning ”any longer,” the term is one word, anymore. Thus: I did not write any more, so Dr. Zbar won’t be reading me anymore. A positive, dialectical use is on the rise, meaning ”now, at present,” which comes naturally to Midwesterners and sounds weird to coastal dwellers: I think I’ll write about Americans anymore.) The confusion began with Martin Waldseemuller, the German mapmaker, in 1507. Do not blame Amerigo Vespucci, the explorer from Florence, who sailed to this continent four times between 1497 and 1503, and named the place Mundus Novus, Latin for ”New World.” Good name. If good enough had been let alone, we would all be Mundus Novusans today. But Waldseemuller, who apparently did not think much of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 trip, scorned Vespucci’s coinage; in his Cosmographiae Introductio, the mapmaker dubbed the new land America, and in those days, cartographers had clout.

In a certain section of Mundusland beginning in 1578, American was used to refer to the dark-skinned natives; these natives were later miscalled ”Indians,” perpetuating a mistake by Mr. Columbus, who thought he was somewhere else. Clergyman Cotton Mather adopted the notion of calling the colonists from England Americans in 1697.

Almost a century later, the United Colonies sounded like a good name to many revolutionists, while others preferred the United States of North America. The pamphleteer Tom Paine, it is said, suggested the broader, and less Colonially dependent, United States of America which found its way into the Declaration of Independence. However, as Stuart Berg Flexner recounts in ”I Hear America Talking,” the new Government used the United States of North America as the official title until 1778, when the Continental Congress, thinking in multicontinental terms, passed an act dropping the North.

Now to the only extensive modern survey of suggested names for citizens of what has come to be known as the U.S.A., or more jocularly and accurately, the U.S. of A.. These letters are the initials of the name of the country and are not the trademark of a subsidiary of the Gannett Newspapers. (Since this bunch of letters was found in a deep drawer, it can be called an in-depth survey.) Usans, pronounced YOU-senz, was the preference of many. Variants of this form include Usanians and Usatians, both popular, but the pacific Usasians might prompt the slogan ”Usasia for the Usasiatics”; some entries went back to the acronym for United States of North America for Usonians, Usonans, Usofans, Usofams and Usoans.

Others like USAmericans, pronounced You-ess-Americans, and USAers, the ending to rhyme with naysayers. A jingoistic sense was added by Andrea Sharp of Berkeley, Calif.: ”Better than Usan is Ussin,” or Us’n (pronounced USS-in). ”All the citizens of the United States would be called Ussins and everybody else Themins. Headlines all over the world would read: ‘Ussins and Themins Meet Again in Geneva for Another Round of SALT Talks’.” (Another suggestion on these lines – Ussies, to rhyme with hussies, may be rejected as anti-feminist; User, coming from ”one who uses,” is subversive; and we can write off Usurers, sent in from some debtor nation.) An original variation of the same beginning is from Tessa Blumberg of New York: Usam, preserving the mid-19th-century image of Uncle Sam. Others trying to tie into the image wound up with Uncles, but the avuncular connotation of that was ruined by Mr. Reagan’s hope that opponents would ”say uncle.” In the same way, Samians apes too closely the word simians, and Samites would invite anti-Samitism.

Turning to monikers taken from whole words, one entry is Uniteds: ”If citizens of the Soviet Union are called Soviets, which means ‘councils’,” writes David Halperin of Washington, ”surely we should not mind being called Uniteds.” On that line, David Kwartler of New York City turned in Units, on the analogy of Brits for the British, but that has an Orwellian connotation, like United Statistics.

More frequently suggested was Statesider, long a name applied to residents of the continental United States by expatriates or offshore residents. United Staters is simple and direct, analogous to American, and better than the pretentious and even sexist United Statesman.

Wild suggestions ranged from the acronym Noncom (NOrth Americans Not from Canada Or Mexico) to Namericans, slipping in the n for North, to the historic Jonathan, from the predecessor to Uncle Sam, ”Brother Jonathan,” who may have been Jonathan Trumbull, George Washington’s friend.

Wait. ”I feel compelled to inform you,” writes David Draper from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, ”that there are some 25,000,000 North Americans who do not refer to themselves as Americans. We, sir, are Canadians.”

Same thing with Mexicans; that’s what they call themselves. That means the only North Americans who call themselves Americans are us – or us’ns, if you will. That limits the problem to South and Central Americans. How about they call themselves whatever they like, and we continue to call ourselves Americans, with the limitation to the United States understood?

In that regard, we may use a linguistic device by which pronunciation changes spelling: centuries ago, a napron became an apron, and kids on Brooklyn playgrounds ask each other today ”What is the fruit that begins with an n? A norange!” Intrahemispheric comity is in the ear of the beholder: when I travel in South America and I say ”I am an American,” let the hearer hear ”I am a Namerican”. The understanding listener will know I am a North American and, since I have not claimed to be Canadian or Mexican, from the United States.

Although Ussins and Themins have their appeal, and Yankee and Gringo are useful synonyms, perhaps it is wiser to rely on the perceptiveness of our neighbors to the south and stick with Americans as the name for people from the United States, no colossusism intended. Our diplomats can point out it is short for United States of Americans, which is a mouthful.

That enables us all to lose our fear of jingoism and embrace the name that Waldseemuller coined, saving us from being called Mundus Novitiates. Remember that on the Glorious Fourth, and on I Am a Namerican Day.