>I was watching my favourite intellectual quiz show last week: "QI", and one of the questions was "What is the nationality of a person from the USA?". I kinda missed the answers. Now a lot of them would say "American" but that essentially refers to the continent; a Canadian could equally call himself "American" (as indeed could a Mexican, Bolivian or Chilean - "North" or "South" aren't included).
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>So what is the nationality?

I've started a few threads on this too. I think the term "American" is caused by three things:
- the US has a descriptive name "United States of America" as does the UK, instead of an essentially meaningless one like Canada or France. Thus the usage of the end of that phrase is sort of understandable
- for a great period of it existence the US has believed in Manifest Destiny, that the continent belonged to it. And thus the term "American" or residents of the North American continent was natural.
- "US American" is too akward as is "United Stater" and "Uniter" is too generic

Mexicans and Canadians use the term "North American" but I don't hear it used much in American media.

The term "American" is rarely or never used to describe North and South Americans collectively. Though "the Americas" to describe the continents or countries is used.

Could you imagine of a European country renamed itself to the "United States of Europe" and referred to its citizens as "Europeans".