United States (of America)
I sometimes suffer from what my mother calls “false memory syndrome,” so, maybe I just made this little problem up. But, I seem to remember a time when - when you had to select your country from a drop-down list on a website or in some app, for convenience, the “United States” would be set at or near the top, while the rest of the countries of the world would be listed alphabetically, presumably because the site was geared towards an American audience and this would prevent the vast majority of users from being required to scroll all the way down to “U” to select their country.
Somewhere along the way, this changed, and now I very rarely, if ever, see this convenience factor, and have been required for many years now to scroll all the way down to “U” to find my country. I can only assume that the reason for this change has been some subtle collective belief by UI designers that it’s offensive to the rest of the world to put “America first,” and because our real name is the “United States of America” (more on that here later) they need not only to not put us “first,” but they need to put us wayyyyyy down near the end, in the U’s.
Fine. I accept that.
But since we’re being all accurate and stuff, can we all please at least agree that our name needs to be stated correctly?
We are not the “United States.” We are the “United States of America.” At least, I think we are. I went ahead and did some research, because I was worried I was suffering “false memory syndrome” on that, too. (Or, as Judge Corderman used to say, “Information from nowhere lands on my head and becomes fact for me.”)
Sure enough, I checked the Declaration of Independence from 1776, and the Articles of Confederation of 1777, and the Constitution of 1789, and all three of those documents name us the “United States of America.” I don’t know where else to look for our country’s “real name,” other than to consult those primary documents, so, if you have a better suggestion, I’m all ears.
Anyway, having confirmed to the best of my ability that we are actually the “United States of America,” if you’re designing a country picker, if you are not going to make it convenient for me to pick my country by putting “America first,” can you please kindly at least put my country’s actual name as the “United States of America,” and not just the “United States?”
Are there other United States-es (is that how you pluralize United States?)?
Well, according to Google’s search suggestions, there are a few other United States ofs…
None of them are countries, so, it’s not really going to generate confusion for those trying to pick their country.
But this never was really about user-friendliness - it was about being politically correct. And if we’re going to be “politically” correct, shouldn’t we at least try to be “factually” correct, as well?
I don’t think we should take Christ out of Christmas (Xmas) and I don’t think we should take America out of the United States.
(Yeah, I know, nobody asked).