People from the United States of America are known as and refer to themselves as Americans. Different languages use different terms for citizens of the United States, who are known in English as Americans. All forms of English refer to US citizen as American, a term deriving from the United States of America, the country's official name. In the English context, it came to refer to inhabitants of British 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, Japanese, and Russian, use cognates of American to refer to people from the United States, while others, particularly Spanish and Portuguese, primarily use