LOL! Well, there is certainly a tendency toward ethnocentricity in any nationality or distinct group of people. I note that the first thing they emphasize on our Canadian news when there's a plane crash in, say, the Phillipines is...

...they let know you know whether or not any Canadians were on the plane, and if so how many, and whether any Canadians were killed.

So what's that about? Well, on the one hand, it's ethnocentricity. On the other hand, it's just doing your job as an extended "family" (which is what a nation or ethnic group is, in a sense), and keeping the family informed as to what is going on with its members.

So you can look on it positively or negatively, as you choose.

Don Firth's last post has pretty well got the "American" thing covered, I think.

What we see now in the use of these terms is the end result of what happened when a group of rebellious British colonists got together in the 1770's and decided to join several colonies into a new nation. They apparently couldn't think of or at least agree on any specific name to call that new nation...so they named it for the entire continental area.

They might have, for example, called it "Columbia", I suppose. Just one possibility. Or they could have called it "Cascadia" or "Appalachia" or "Arborea" or really anything like that. But you had the representatives of thirteen different colonies, now becoming independent states...in a cooperative association together...

Can you imagine the difficulties of getting men from thirteen different states to all agree on what to call their new country??? It would be a real hassle.

So I figure that's probably why they went for the literal statement of simply calling it "the United States of America". They were short of time to decide, having a war to fight, and it was the only thing everyone was willing to agree on at the time.