I’m a baseball fan, but even so I can’t avoid a flash of annoyance when I hear the term “World Series” applied to a set of teams based in cities as far north as Southern Canada, as far south as the Southern United States, and as far east and west as the North American coastline. True, players come from a larger assortment of countries than in earlier times, but a real “World Series” ought to include Japanese  and South American teams, at the very least.

That said, it occurs to me that coming up with inclusive and sensitive names is a tough task. When I was preparing to study at the University of Madrid, my US-based Spanish teachers told me that the answer to the question “What are you?” was not “American” (americana) but the Spanish equivalent of “United Statesonian” (estadounidensa). If I called myself americana, the teachers explained, listeners would object because the term rightly applies to South Americans also. My teachers gave me one alternative – norteamericana (North American). No one seemed concerned about Canadians’ feelings, an attitude that unfortunately persists in many areas of US policy.

Of course, the very first time I fielded the “What are you?” question from a Spaniard, estadounidensa was met with a blank look and then “Oh, you mean you’re American.” Mindful of classmates from South America, Central America, and yes, Canada, I never could bring myself to say that I was an americana. So I settled on neorquina (New Yorker) and everyone was happy.

My family went through a similar process. My grandparents answered “Austrian” when asked about their homeland because their village was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they emigrated. My parents claimed “Yugoslavia” as the ancestral site, while I say that my background is “Croatian.”

And then there are states. Some are easy (Californian, Texan, and New Yorker, though the distinction between the city and state in that last one may be problematic). But what do you call a resident of Connecticut? The only answer I’ve heard is Nutmegger, because apparently Connecticut calls itself “the Nutmeg State.” How widespread is that knowledge?

Can we keep up with partitions, annexations, and nicknames when we apply a name to someone’s ethnicity or citizenship? Probably not. The best policy may be to go for the detail (“her grandparents lived in Prague before World War II”) but this method crashes and burns when it hits the widespread American (oops – I mean United Statesonian) ignorance of geography.

I’ll stop here, hoping for suggestions on naming from anyone reading this post, because I don’t have a solution. Besides, it’s time to watch the “Miss Universe” pageant.