Talk:Americas

Terminology - French - regional disparities

The following statement only applies in Europe and Africa. French-Canadians never use Amérique to refer to the United States. I feel the statement needs to be rectified.

In French, Amérique is also used to refer to the United States, making the term ambiguous.

Pan american

The Panamerican gentile should be considered to refer to what is part of the Americas as mentioned by the oxford English dictionary in the main table — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.158.8.16 (talk) 05:49, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

It's not clear what you're asking for here. The term Pan-American is discussed Americas#English, and frankly, the article already spends way too much time on terminology. WilyD 06:54, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 25 February 2020

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. After extended time for discussion, we remain at an impasse over the proposal. BD2412 T 19:21, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Americas → The Americas – As per The Californias (recently confirmed in a nearly unanimous RM), The Carolinas, and many many similar titles. WP:CONSISTENCY should control. Red Slash 20:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. OhKayeSierra (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment: Just a note that this move has been suggested before, in 2013, without gaining consensus. See Talk:Americas/Archive 5#Move request. Deor (talk) 21:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

• Unlike The Solent the EB article is just at "Americas". The Maritimes is under "Maritime Provinces". In the Californias discussion there were 3 in favour (including the proposer) and 4 against so I'd hardly say "nearly unanimous". Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:32, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

  That is correct. My apologies. Red Slash 03:34, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support I've never heard of them referred to as "Americas" without the "the"._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 05:20, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
• Support - the current title is ungrammatical gibberish. See The Canadas, The Carolinas, The Dakotas, The Virginias, The Floridas - the current title is an artifact of the usual POV pushers. WilyD 08:12, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:THE, just as in 2013. Deor (talk) 08:32, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
  • It is probably wrong to assert that WP:THE can justify opposing this request. It's probably the case that reason #1 to use "The" in a title applies here, although it's mostly about the case where two cases are competing, not the case here where "The Americas" has one meaning, and "Americas" has no meaning at all. But that's more analogous than anything discussed. And, of course, the obvious point about how guidelines acknowledge sometimes you need to think about what you're doing, and not make obviously immensely dumb decisions because a cursory reading of a guideline without thinking about it might support that. This page is only at this title because people are trying to use the title as a soapbox to push the same POV they're always pushing here. The title is a very clear violation of WP:NPOV, which is of course a policy - something we should feel obliged to follow where possible, not a guideline, which is more for when you're not sure of what to do. But here, everyone should be quite sure, which is why in every analogous case where there isn't a POV being pushed, people end up at the obviously correct decision. WilyD 09:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

As I said in the previous move request, if "Americas" has no meaning at all, someone has clearly failed to notify The New York Times, The Guardian, and other news organizations. Deor (talk) 09:17, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

How does the current title violate NPOV, exactly? Not sure if I'm missing something obvious here. —Will^(B) 13:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support. We should use english rather than gibberish. -Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 09:22, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. The arguments in favor of the move don't make sense. I have never heard of The Atlantic Ocean referred as Atlantic Ocean, yet I don't think we should rename the title of the Wikipedia page to "The Atlantic Ocean". Otherwise 99% of all encyclopedia entries would start with a "T". There was already a move suggestion that did not gain consensus in 2013. Odds are the outcome of this move suggestion will be exactly the same. And if this move is approved, it will most likely lead to an edit war. Globe Trotter (talk) 00:41, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
• Support - the current title is not used by RS. Rjensen (talk) 01:22, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose for same reasons given by Deor and Globe Trotter. RadiculousJ (talk) 02:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
• Support for the same reasons as listed above, as well as the fact that "The Americas" just sounds better in my opinion. Mattx8y (talk) 17:14, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per Globe Trotter. Also support moving all those others (ie The Carolinas to Carolinas). --Khajidha (talk) 22:17, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

To clarify, titles should only start with "The" when it would be capitalized in running text. Nome of these would be, so the "the" is purely grammatical, not part of the name.--Khajidha (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, I think. Not seeing anything in WP:THE that would justify the "the" here, or in any of the other articles like this, e.g. The Carolinas. —Will^(B) 13:52, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support per WilyD. Consistently used as "the Americas". feminist (talk) 03:06, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: I was originally planning on closing this as no consensus, but I'd prefer that we get the RM right the first time, so I'm going to relist it to get a more thorough consensus on how to go about moving this article.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, OhKayeSierra (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - my understanding of WP:THE supports the current AT. Guettarda (talk) 23:42, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per WP:THE, it's written as "the Americas" in normal text, not "The Americas". Yes, "the Americas" sounds better, but that's just grammar, not a proper name. - BilCat (talk) 02:10, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Anasazi Culture

In the precolumbian section the article only mentions the civilisations of central and southamerica like the Maya, Aztecs and Inca. Why it doesn´t mention the cultures of the Anasazi and Pueblos or Cahokia in North America? Greetings - Steffen AM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.173.20.234 (talk) 06:45, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• The section is an attempt to summarise in a paragraph or two something like ten thousand years of history - which is then expounded in the article Pre-Columbian era, which itself summarises many hundreds of other articles. It would be completely impossible to even namecheck every pre-1492 society in the Americas in a paragraph or two. Nonetheless, there may be some merit to the suggestion that those listed there aren't terribly representative of the whole. You could take a stab at re-writing it. WilyD 07:52, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

First European settlement

The article cites Leif Erikson as the first European to settle the Americas, but most definitions of the Americas (such as the one shown on this article's thumbnail) include Greenland, which had already been settled by the time of Erikson. The first settlement on greenland was founded in the 980s by Erik the Red, Leif's father. --AwaweWiki (talk) 22:00, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, checking, it's read that way for a long time, but you're correct. The best thing to do is to suggest a different phrasing, or just be bold!. WilyD 13:16, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Americas?

Americas sounds stupid why not just america or the american continent just like the same article in every other language.Then why not the europes or the asias or the africas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.22.159.229 (talk) 23:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Because the is the English Wikipedia, the article is written in English. As has been noted, this is a fairly common naming convention in English: The Carolinas, The Canadas, The Dakotas and so forth. Similar constructions exist in Afrikaans and French, at least (though I see the fr article is written by Europeans, and so uses the more colonialist language). WilyD 05:07, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Agree with WilyD re this is English Wikipedia. But the original posters argument is logically incoherent. In the English speaking world there are two American continents so having a term 'the Americas' is perfectly valid. On the other hand there are not two European, African or Asian continents so using the term 'Europes', 'Africas' and 'Asias' is incoherent. Maybe the misunderstanding is that the original poster is from an area of the world where North and South America is a single continent and therefore the plural term is meaningless but again this is English Wikipedia and North and South America are two continents. No further discussion needed really. Or is there? Robynthehode (talk) 08:36, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, this article should be moved to The Americas per criterion 1 of WP:THE (and general considerations that we're trying to write an encyclopaedia), but it probably won't happen because too many people try to apply WP:THE completely blind. But the "rename this America" will keep coming up because there's some political view that this should happen. So, it's at least often advocacy, which never goes away. WilyD 08:44, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Robynthehode's reply is logically incoherent. Nope, in the "English-speaking world" there are not "two Americas", that is false. It depends on the particular researcher and person. Many researchers and people from "the English-speaking world" do employ the term "America" to refer to the whole continent and consider it to be a single unified continent. It is completely false that it is universally accepted in the English-speaking world the subdivision in two continents of America. James343e (talk) 12:26, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

WillyD It has nothing to do with politics but rather with geography. From a purely geographic point of view, most scientists from all over the world do consider it to be a single continent. If anything, it is the other way around, it is attempted to be artificially divided in two continents due to political considerations, to distance the richer North countries (except Mexico) from the poorer South countries. Anyhow, your claim that the consideration of America as a single continent is politically biased is original research and so not a good practice in Wikipedia.James343e (talk) 12:32, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you're getting this information from, but it's completely false. In the English speaking world, the Americas are invariably treated as two separate continents, and only very rarely referred to as 'America', usually in archaic and/or colonial contexts. The division in English is so strong that I previously quoted my old desktop dictionary, which defined the word continent to demand that there are seven of them (even though any idiot with a map can see Europe and Asia are actually on the same continent). Similarly, there are no scientific contexts in which you'd refer to them as a single continent (though you may draw other divisions, like neo-tropic vs. ne-_arctic, but you wouldn't call either of those things continents).

As far as why people might want to pretend they're a single continent, I don't think that's but obliquely referred to in the article, and this article already spends way, way, way, way, way, way, way too much time on the terminology rather than the landmasses and their properties, partly because of the abundance of editors who are here to soapbox about their dislike of English and/or their love of colonialism, and partly because it's exceedingly difficult to actually find sources about the Americas in English, because North America and South America are almost inevitably treated separately. So I don't think there's any need to discuss such an issue in the article, but there's of course no need for me to be dishonest or play dumb here. The constant and often ham-fisted attempts to move this article "America", give that extremely esoteric usage primacy, or otherwise imply it's somehow the proper usage and the regular usage is wrong is not for scientific or geographical reasons, but for political/soapboxing reasons. Indeed, if you go down to American (word), you'll see the sources there do set it clear that attempts to change the regular English-language usage of America and such is entirely political. WilyD 12:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Willy, you make over-general claims that are not supported by empirical evidence. Contrary to waht you said, it is completely false that in the English-speaking world the Americas are universally treated as two different continents. Here you have two sources in English from the English-speaking world that acknowledge the existence of the 5 continents model and how America may be viewed as a single unified continent:

1. https://www.worldometers.info/geography/continents/

2. https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/continents.htm

It depends on the model, it is not true that America is universally viewed as two separate continents as per the sources and so we must remain neutral and reflect both views.James343e (talk) 13:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Sure, "universally" is more like 99.9999% than 100% (although if you look at Continent you'll see that other models are vanishingly rare, and often inserted as a quasi-original research. America, of course, is understood in English to refer to that country jammed in there between Canada and Mexico.

But, beyond that, neutrality doesn't mean the false balance of equal time, see WP:UNDUE. We don't give equal weight to different positions, we give weight to positions relative to their weight in sources. That we give the use of America to mean the Americas any more than a footnote, or that the Americas may secretly be one continent here is realistically favouring it too heavily, as bad as if we gave half the section on the peopling of the Americas to the Soltrean hypothesis. WilyD 14:48, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

And heck, even your second source opens by quoting a dictionary saying the word "continent" specifically denotes there are seven continents, notes seven is the standard, although six with Eurasia gets used sometimes for geography and some science cases. WilyD 14:52, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

This is probably based on the ethnocentric use of the term "America" for only the United States. I have noticed that the term "America" is used as a redirect to the United States, which is totally meaningless, as this is a wrong usage of the term America. America of course refers to all the land mass between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. Oddeivind (talk) 08:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)