<P> Different languages use different terms for citizens of the United States, who are known in English as Americans . All forms of English refer to United States citizens as Americans, a term deriving from the Americas . In the English context, it came to refer to inhabitants of British North America and then the United States . However, there is some linguistic ambiguity over this use due to the other senses of the word American, which can also refer to people from the Americas in general . Other languages, including French, German, Japanese and Russian, use cognates of American to refer to people from the United States while others, particularly Spanish, primarily use terms derived from United States . There are various other local and colloquial names for Americans . </P> <P> Amerigo Vespucci first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as conjectured by Christopher Columbus, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to the peoples of the Old World . Martin Waldseemüller coined the term America (in honor of Vespucci) in a 1507 world map . </P>

What is a person from the united states called