When I went to elementary school, I remember believing that the name of the country that I lived in was the United States of America. It was right there in the Pledge of Allegiance. It was one of several countries on the continent of North America, and as the continent was called North America, the way to shorten the name was to call it the United States.

I was aware, of course, of several patriotic songs where we sang of “America the Beautiful” and others that seemed to call this country “America”, but I just assumed that was poetic license. I already was aware of poetic license, though I didn’t necessarily know it by that name. It was easier to sing America than it was to sing United States.

For example in the words to the West Side Story song:

I like to be in America
OK by me in America
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America.

The United States simply wouldn’t work there. 

But that was sung by Puerto Ricans, and Puerto Rico is actually a part of this country and its people are United States citizens. I wonder what Puerto Ricans actually call this country? Stephen Sondheim has professed embarrassment at the lyrics to that show; I wonder if that played a part in it?

The thought occurred to me because over the years I find I’ve been worn down by all the references to America and I’ve started using the term myself, at least some of the time.

For example, a few weeks ago when I ordered my latest T-shirt, I wanted to get the Spanish correct, so I checked with both Apple Translate and Google Translate, and they each told me that the Spanish for “America is a nation of immigrants” is “Estados Unidos es una nación de inmigrantes”. So that’s what I went with. (Given all the Spanish speaking folks that are to be found in this neighborhood, I don’t know why I didn’t at least check with one of them, but I didn’t.)

So when I saw that episode of Acapulco where Maximo goes ballistic over the name of this country, I got to thinking, well, what do the folks in other countries call us?

It makes sense that the folks in Mexico and presumably other North and South American countries might be particularly sensitive to calling this country simply America. How about some European countries? I checked and as far as the translation apps are concerned, the German word for America is Amerika. The French word is L’Amérique. The Russian is Америка. Chinese Mandarin is somewhere in 美国是一个移民国家.

That does not, of course, mean that speakers in those countries necessarily refer to this country in that way; it might simply mean they aren’t as fussy about it as Spanish speakers are.

And of course, I can’t use the Translate apps to figure out how other English-speaking nations refer to this land. I have watched a fair number of British chat shows, and I seem to recall that they often use the short-hand form “the States”.

Still and all, it’s interesting, and in the future I’m going to try to stick to United States when I want to use this country’s name.