Monday, June 21, 2010

Karine and Tom in America

This sounds pretty catchy as a new name for the blog. It sounds patriotic and fun. That's us! It sounds like the name of a really great show on TLC.

It's accurate. We are in America, the part of North America that is the United States of America, more specifically, Omaha, Nebraska.

But is is fair?

Most people living in the U.S. are unaware of this particular issue, but here it is: people living in the non-U.S. Americas (Mexico, Honduras, Canada, Brazil, ect.) boil gently when we call our country America and ourselves American. They're not hopping mad like the veins on their foreheads are going to explode, but they feel it's a little presumptuous, maybe a little big-headed of us to expropriate the proper name for two continents and go ahead and call ourselves that.

But there is really no adequate alternative. We believe in accurate and efficient language. It's a core American value.

It's a core United Statesperson value. It's a core United States of American value. It's a core person-of-the-United-States value.

Well, we're still thinking about what to call our blog now that we're back in the United States of America. But we're glad to be home. And we'll just have to go ahead and ask for the continued patience and understanding of our fellow North and South Americans as we call ourselves American.

3 comments:

Jane and Douglas said...

As a Canadian I had never heard of this before until a few weeks ago where I came across a comment on a forum where the person was soooo mad that the American had dared to refer to their country as "America". Again, never heard of this. To me it is absolutely not offensive. I would never think of feeling that the name has been expropriated. I live in North America, but I am a Canadian and my land, Canada. If someone tells me they are an American, I know you are from "America" and I see absolutely nothing wrong with this at all. All the best to you!

Karine and Tom said...

Ha!

That's super funny, Jane. I was going to write something like: "Don't worry about offending Canadians. They are super laid back and don't tie themselves up knots over these nomenclature type issues."

You beat me to the punch. Canadians are the best!

Tom

andie said...

You should pull a Prince thing and call your blog "Karine and Tom formerly located in Honduras"