A country by any other name

I've been talking about the name of our country for a long time (such as here) because it's a clue to our identity and nature. It is a description more than a name. Other than perhaps the UK and the UAE, we're the only country in the world without a name, at least in the traditional sense -- like France, Germany, Spain, China, etc.

Stop The ACLU did a post today that pointed out the same thing:

There were good reasons for this: the first is obvious if you just understand our country’s name.

The name “The United States of America” isn’t just something made-up to sound good or to refer to something in antiquity; the men who chose it did so because that’s precisely what their new country was intended to be: A group of hitherto independent states (read “countries”, like all the separate and independent duchies and principalities that were later joined to form Germany or Italy) united into a single political organism, originally for the purpose of gaining its independence from England, and then to proceed as a single sovereign nation. “E pluribus unum” – “Out of many, one” – is not only our country’s motto, but also its best descriptor.