- published: 04 Sep 2015
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Americans, or American people, are the citizens of the United States of America. The country is home to people of different national origins. As a result, Americans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship. Aside from the Native American population, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture held in common by most Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European immigrants. It also includes influences of African American culture. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics.
Hispanic or Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the countries of Latin America and Spain and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. Reflecting especially the Latin American population, which has origins in all the continents and many ancestries, Hispanic/Latino Americans are very racially diverse, and as a result form an ethnic category, rather than a race. While the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, "Hispanic" is a narrower term which only refers to persons of Spanish-speaking origin or ancestry, while "Latino" is more frequently used to refer more generally to anyone of Latin American origin or ancestry, including Brazilians.Hispanic thus includes persons from Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin Americans but excludes Brazilians while Latino excludes persons from Spain but includes Spanish-speaking Latin Americans and Brazilians. Because Brazil's population of 191,000,000 is several times larger than Spain's population of 47,000,000 and also because there are more Brazilian Americans ( between 360,000 and 1,100,000 as of 2010) than Spanish Americans (about 85,000 as of 2010) in the United States, Latino is a broader term encompassing more people. The choice between the terms Latino and Hispanic among those of Spanish-speaking origin is also associated with location: persons of Spanish-speaking origins residing in the eastern United States tend to prefer the term Hispanic, whereas those in the west tend to prefer Latino.
This is a list of notable Hispanic and Latino Americans: citizens or residents of the United States with origins in Hispanic America or Spain. The following groups are officially designated as "Spanish/Hispanic/Latino":Mexican American, (Stateside) Puerto Rican, Cuban American, Dominican American, Costa Rican American, Guatemalan American, Honduran American, Nicaraguan American, Panamanian American, Salvadoran American, Argentine American, Bolivian American, Chilean American, Colombian American, Ecuadorian American, Paraguayan American, Peruvian American, Spanish American, Uruguayan American, and Venezuelan American. However, Hispanic or Latino people can have any ancestry.