Being from the USA, I can confidently say “Yankee” is a term that is fairly neutral in meaning. People from the South states use it to refer to basically any American not from the South, and I get the sense people from the UK use it to refer to anyone from the USA.

In my experience, “Gringo” seems to be a term used by Spanish-speakers (even ones from North and South America) to refer to English speakers who think they’re better than everyone, so it appears to be a term with negative connotations

In America, yankee means people from a particular part of America. But we use it here in Australia to mean any American. It's especially fun when people from the south (that is…the south of the country America, not from the continent of South America) take offence at the term IMO.

We also use "seppo" which is an Australian shortening slang of "septic", which is rhyming slang (of the kind used in both Australia and London, England) that comes via "septic tank" via "yank".

Gringo seems strange to me. I thought that was a predominantly Latin American term for white people, and would apply equally well to Americans as Canadians as Australians as (of particular relevance to someone from Spain) English…but only the white of each, so it would seem to me it shouldn't work as synonymous with "American" because it excludes African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. But I'm not Spanish or Latin American, so I might just be misunderstanding the word.

Edit: what yank means depending on where you are (allegedly):

Just say "idiots." Source: USA citizen.

Burros como o caralho is Portuguese for USAians.

It translates to something like dumb as fuck.

It's a weird lacuna of the English language, there's no official word for estadounidense.

In Brazil, we use USians or Statesians

I used the second one on an academic paper and it went through.

I NEVER use "American", because

America no es solo USA, papá esto es desde el Tierra del Fuego hasta el Canada

Being a native, a Yankee to me is a New Englander. My Spanish friend had to gently explain to me, “shut up, you’re all yanquis.”

I prefer the formal name in spanish of estadounidense (united-statistian) to American.

we call them "estadunidense" which roughly translates to "usian". usians tend not to like it.

but, like, you call yourself after the entire continent, am i supposed to take it seriously?

I'm USAian. (just identifying for this thread, i don't call myself that)

would "gringo" include Black USAians? Asian USAians? Spain-born USAians?

from my understanding of "gringo", that doesn't seem to include non-white USAians. Most English monolingual USAians think that means "white guy".

a lot of gen z USAians might not know the word Yankee as a term for USAians. if speaking to them, you might have to explain it's not the baseball team.

maybe it's better to stick with "USAians". it's never been used but it's easy to figure out. other possible choices are:

• Statesians
• USAliens
• USAmericans
• Staters
• Stater Tots (re: tater tots)
• USticles

better yet, call each of us by the state we're each from. that's the safest bet. you know all our 50 state names right? and their official demonyms? 🤣 kidding

Unfortunately the USAians are so dominant in the region of the Americas that they've coopted the term American for most people. My Columbian friend hates when we refer to USAians as Americans because he says "hey we were here first" 😆. But unfortunately that's the way it is.

Yanks or Yankee Doodles is what we used to call them but they get rather upset these days when you call them that. I wouldn't call them gringos because it just sounds unnatural for a Brit to say that seriously.

In the USA, Yankee refers to mainly northeast US, including the New York City area. Western Americans would be neutral about being called that and you might piss off some southerners.

My exposure to the term gringo has mainly been that it refers to white Americans. I don't know if you would call a black American gringo or how they would accept it.

I’m in Texas, so there is a lot of Mexican cultural exchange. Spanish was practically a second language in my public schools, and most people speak at least a little bit of spanglish.

When a Mexican calls an American a gringo, they’re not being nice. “Gringo” is typically used as a pejorative, to refer to a specific type of “mayo is too spicy and I’m afraid of people who have melatonin” white people.

German here, most of the time I say "US-American"

Not too sure about gringo but I know yankee is correct, I hear that one a lot from folks I know in the UK.

There's some weird linguistic drift where in the southern US, we call northerners yankees, even though in the rest of the world we're all yankees. Now I'm curious how that started.

Gringo and yankee are both fine. However, it's most correct to refer to people from the USA by their birth state.

This probably isn’t helpful for referring to all Americans but in the U.S., we use whatever state/regjon within the United States a person is from as the demonym. So, someone from California would be Californian, someone from Texas would be Texan. For a regional example, someone from the Northeast would be a New Englander.

For most of the history of the Republic, the states viewed themselves sort of like EU countries do now: independent states in America that united. It probably wasn’t until the World Wars that it changed.

It can get more complicated, unfortunately. Native Americans would probably use their tribal name instead of the state, for instance. But that’s why we don’t have a demonym and everyone has resorted to USian or USAian on message boards.

Do you not have a term in Spanish?

If y'all use yank, yankee, or gringo, they're all fine.

But, American is fine too. If you're using English, everyone will know what you mean. It isn't like it hasn't been the term used in English for at least a century.

Here the thing. If you're referring to someone from one of the two/three americas, you specify north, central and south. That depends a little on whether you consider all three as discrete areas, or not, but that's the norm in English.

If you want to refer to all people from the americas at once, Americans is also fine. Context will carry which way you're using it. English is fairly easy to make contextual indicators like that.

An example: "oh, Americans love their flag". Which americans are we talking about? The ones with a specific American flag. Which, the statement isn't universally true, it's just an example.

If you aren't using English, it doesn't matter at all, use whatever terminology is the norm in that language.

The reason it doesn't matter is that there really isn't an "American" people in the continental sense. The cultures of the continents don't even have a unifying effect, though you do have some connection between Spanish speaking vs Portuguese, vs native, vs English, etc. The language links in South America are much more significant than the fact that they live on the same continent.

Any time you'd be referring to the entire Americas, or the peoples of them, you'd specify that because there's not a single American continent.

One nation out of all of them being america really isn't a difficulty in conversation. It's a non issue.

Call them murican. Everyone gets it, even the usa-ians

You can say USAmerican or US (as an adjective, e.g. US government) as a neutral demonym. "Yankee" and "gringo" have pejorative connotations, although I'm not Latin American so I don't know what the connotations are among LatAm Spanish speakers. Also, my understanding of the word "gringo" as someone who lives in neither of the Americas is that it refers to specifically white people, not USAmericans in general. I'm not sure if I've understood the usage of the term correctly, but if other people have the same understanding, they may get confused if you call eg a Black USAmerican a gringo.

imo, 'gringo' has no special meaning unless it was given one from a local group. like how "let's go brandon" only makes sense on a specific group.

'yankee' used to have a specific one before, i.e. north-eastern US bros, but it got saturated and now could be used generally. imo, 'yankee' usage has ye olde vibe to it, but maybe that's just me.

EDIT: corrected 'southern', thanks to Denvil

Yankistani.