El Goonish Shive III - Totally Adorkable!

[Lissou]

When someone says 'American', you know they're talking about someone from the United States. People don't call people from North and South America 'Americans'. They call them 'North Americans' or 'South Americans'.

That is an assumption. I have, in the past, used "American" to meant "All Americans combined", and wouldn't have used either "North American" or "South American" because both would be too restrictive (since I meant both of those, plus Central Americans, plus possibly other Americans depending on how you divide up America). And I have heard people use it this way, too. Assumptions like this one are exactly the problem with labels. Yes, within the United States, people who say "American" typically mean "from the United States of America". That is not true of everywhere and it was something for me to adjust to when I moved to the US. You may think people are being disingenuous here just because they don't like the word, but it's not just that. I has been a problem for people in the past and that's why the issue gets raised.

Similarly, moving to the US caused me to have to get used to things like "This person isn't Christian, they're Catholic" because "Christian" is assumed to mean "Protestant" in the US, even though I didn't actually know the difference between "Christian" and "Catholic" before I moved because the former is used to mean the latter where I come from. Of course both uses are inaccurate anyway.

It's fine using labels if you know the person you're talking to has the same definition for them as you do. When you know that they don't, and you don't know a word they'd understand for what you mean, it makes more sense to use a sentence than a label to describe things.

EDIT: Also, when I learned the continents, "North America" did not include Mexico. Here, it does. So even using "North America" could easily be misunderstood if you don't first make sure you mean the same thing.