British? English? Scottish? Irish?

[mopthebunny]

I naturally say English in spite of being half Scottish  

[Galactica]

Many of my mother's family generally call themselves British, mainly because although the family "came from" Scotland and Ireland, many live in England currently. My grandad, however, will proudly call himself a Scot and nothing else. My mother refers to herself as British mainly because while she was born and mostly raised in Scotland, they moved to New Zealand when she was about 12 or so...she never changed her citizenship, so she's "officially" always been British, but she also came to identify strongly as a Kiwi.

I think the reason people from the US just refer to ourselves and the country as "Americans" and "America" is because the full name is a little bit of a mouthful...The United States of America? There's not much else to intuitively shorten it to for reference to as a nationality.

True- although I've noticed that Europeans often refer to it as "The States"-

Weirdly, when I've visited Mexico and Honduras, the people there call people living in the US "Americans" too- when I pointed out to one person that he was also an "American" he laughed and said no, "I'm Mexican!" -  so yeah, maybe just easier to say.

When people in the US as "WHAT ARE YOU" then usually mean- "what is your cultural heritage?"
When they ask "WHERE ARE YOU FROM" that is a trickier question since it means all of these things
1) where do you live now
2) where did you grow up or "start out" 
3) where are the places you have lived-

When people say "What are you" and they mean - what are my people- I tell them Danish, German, Scottish. When people ask "where are you from" the answer is so dang long that I might just answer "California".

[ghouldilocks]

Spoiler

Many of my mother's family generally call themselves British, mainly because although the family "came from" Scotland and Ireland, many live in England currently. My grandad, however, will proudly call himself a Scot and nothing else. My mother refers to herself as British mainly because while she was born and mostly raised in Scotland, they moved to New Zealand when she was about 12 or so...she never changed her citizenship, so she's "officially" always been British, but she also came to identify strongly as a Kiwi.

I think the reason people from the US just refer to ourselves and the country as "Americans" and "America" is because the full name is a little bit of a mouthful...The United States of America? There's not much else to intuitively shorten it to for reference to as a nationality.

True- although I've noticed that Europeans often refer to it as "The States"-

Spoiler

Weirdly, when I've visited Mexico and Honduras, the people there call people living in the US "Americans" too- when I pointed out to one person that he was also an "American" he laughed and said no, "I'm Mexican!" -  so yeah, maybe just easier to say.

When people in the US as "WHAT ARE YOU" then usually mean- "what is your cultural heritage?"
When they ask "WHERE ARE YOU FROM" that is a trickier question since it means all of these things
1) where do you live now
2) where did you grow up or "start out" 
3) where are the places you have lived-

When people say "What are you" and they mean - what are my people- I tell them Danish, German, Scottish. When people ask "where are you from" the answer is so dang long that I might just answer "California".

Military folk call it "The States" as well. 

Or at least they did when I was a kid.  For example, when my dad got stationed in San Diego after we'd been in Sicily for a couple of years, we'd say things along the lines of "We have to move back to the States.  "

But even then, saying "the States" is still along the same lines as initializing the country's name - it's not a reference to national identity in and of itself. I mean, I guess you could say "I'm Statesian" or something, but no one does that, and even if they did, I'm sure there are other countries which are divided up into states as well, so it would be similar in essence to saying you're American anyway.

Also a quirk of being raised a military brat...when someone asks where you're from or where you grew up, and the short answer is "lots of places"/"kind of all over" and the long answer is to just list everywhere you've lived in chronological order.