America

Since the Discovery of America in 1492, and with the empirical confirmation of the Earth's sphericity, the continent became connected to Eurafrasia, which led to a global reorganization of societies on the planet. Since the 16th century, European powers, facing each other, established domains in large areas of the American continent. Between the late 17th century, with the Anglo-Spanish War (1779-1783) and the 19th century, with the Napoleonic Wars, these territories gradually transformed into new states. The process of decolonization was marked by the emergence of the United States as a hemispheric power facing Latin America, through policies such as the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the Manifest Destiny (1845), and the Roosevelt Corollary (1904) in the 20th century.With a population of more than a billion people, America has thirty-five independent countries, and twenty-five dependent territories of five countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands.

Currently, it has eight megacities: Mexico City, New York City, São Paulo, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Lima, and Bogotá.In Spanish, the most commonly used macrotoponym for this continent is America. The plural form Americas is not discouraged by the Royal Spanish Academy. The standard gentilic in Spanish is americano. Regarding this, the ASALE, in its «Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts», recommends avoiding the use of «americano» as a synonym for «estadounidense». The name New World for this continent is currently restricted to academic language, especially in subjects of history or biology.[citation required] The colonial name West Indies has become obsolete for referring to the entire continent, only used in historiographic texts to refer to that historical period, although some use it modernly to refer exclusively to the Caribbean islands.

On the other hand, some indigenous movements or indianist movements use in Spanish neologisms adapted from indigenous terms to refer to the continent, especially Abya Yala.