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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Everytime US users call their country 'America' it sounds weird. America is a continent, not a country.
People from a place get to name the place. Americans named it America as a shorthand for USA.
Its no less weird than any other country name, which are similarly arbitrary.
It's both. Same way Australia is both a country and a continent. I know it can also be called Oceania.
As for shortening United States of America to just America, it's no different than los Estados Unidos Mexicanos shortening it to just Mexico.
Confidently incorrect.
Take it up with Wikipedia. like someone else pointed out there is not really a consensus as to what is specifically called a continent or even how many continents there are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
Oh look Australia has 2 pages, one for the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia
and one for the continent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)
Should you find it weird when any Australian calls themselves Australian and not Commonwealth of Australian? Because as you can see that's the full name.
I'm from Colombia and thought it was weird at first since in Spanish you refer to Americans as Estado Unidenses. Which in hindsight is the weird thing because you don't really do that for other countries. You don't call people from la Republica de Colombia "Republicanos" you call them "Colombianos".
If people from the United States of America want to call themselves Americans, then it makes 100% sense since the "America" in the name of the country is the only part that's actually a proper name and not a descriptor.
Linking here the demonym from people for the United States of America is Americans because United Statetians? would just be weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonyms_for_the_United_States
It's not both though. America isn't a country, and neither is Oceania. America is the name of the continent, and a nickname for the US, and Oceania incoporates several countries, including New Zealand and Papua New Guinea
Technically New Zealand is on its own continent, Zealandia.
For any Americans that are confused by this: Wikipedia | Continents
True that continents are defined differently in different parts of the world. In Europe, there's America and Oceania as continents. In "America", America is a country, and so is Africa :p
(jokes aside, it's true that in the USA continents are defined differently than Europe, for example. There's North America & South America as separate continents, and yes, Australia as a continent).