Late to the Game: How Americans Came to Call Themselves American
Sad to say, he’s late to the game. Americans began calling themselves Americans in the 1700s. That timing set the tone for a new public identity that eventually replaced local and imperial labels.
Before the 1700s most people in the British colonies saw themselves as subjects of the Crown or members of their town or province. As commerce, print culture, and intercolonial travel increased, a shared vocabulary began to appear. The single word American started to feel useful for people who lived across dozens of miles of coastline and forest.
The phrase “American” did practical work from the start by giving colonists a shorthand for shared grievances, trade interests, and cultural ties. Political pamphlets and letters used it to draw comparisons and to make collective arguments about law and rights. That common language helped bridge regional differences when coordination mattered.
Identity rarely arrives all at once; it grows when people need it. In the 1700s that need came from disputes over taxes, the movement of armies, and questions about governance. As those conflicts intensified, the label American moved from casual usage into political vocabulary.
Language can shape action because words make association easier and logistics clearer. Calling yourself American made it natural to form committees, conventions, and coordinated boycotts. In short order, it became a tool for organizing resistance and for imagining a different political future.
That shift is also cultural. Homespun rhetoric in sermons, newspapers, and tavern talk fed a sense of common fate. Poets and polemicists borrowed the term to press moral claims and to craft narratives about liberty and duty. Over time, the word carried emotional weight as well as practical meaning.
Of course, claiming a name did not erase local loyalties or complicating realities. Many colonists still identified strongly with their colony or town and with particular economic roles. And the label excluded large groups, including Indigenous peoples and enslaved people, whose statuses and identities the new term never fully addressed.
Still, the adoption of the word American mattered because it created an opening for political imagination. It let people conceive of a collective interest that could be defended in print and on the battlefield. That collective vocabulary proved decisive when institutions were reorganized and new governments were formed.
The fact that the term took hold in the 1700s explains why national identity feels rooted in the revolutionary era. It was a moment when multiple pressures converged to produce a compact, usable identity. Once in place, the label American carried forward into constitutions, speeches, and everyday conversation.
Understanding that history helps explain why someone might be criticized for suddenly claiming the category long after it formed. The phrase “late to the game” captures a social truth about belonging: names matter, and timing shapes credibility. The story of how Americans began to call themselves American in the 1700s is a reminder that national names are inventions with consequences.