USA Location Designations

Terry Ferguson

Will you please change the location for the United States from that to this: the United States of America??? Especially as we celebrate 250 years this year- I'm actually very surprised that this has remained the "official" description up until now when it's actually INCORRECT. We are the United States of America. Please correct this before 4 July 2026- thanks.

Alan E. Brown

I think there are times that a shortened name is more practical. There are many places shown in FamilySearch, and if every place used the full official name of every country, that would add a large amount of text that would have to be displayed on pages. There are plenty of countries that have longer official names than the common name.

Common Name	Official Name
United States	United States of America
United Kingdom	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Kiribati	Independent and Sovereign Republic of Kiribati
North Korea	Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Western Sahara	Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
San Marino	Most Serene Republic of San Marino
Luxembourg	Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

There are many more. Dozens of countries are officially "Republic of …" or "Kingdom of …", etc.

Although "United States of America" is clearly the full official name, the United States government itself uses the shorter name in many, many contexts. For example, the US Supreme Court always refers to the country in court cases as "United States" (not "United States of America") and the court itself is the United States Supreme Court (not the "United States of America Supreme Court"). I could provide dozens of other examples.

So although your patriotism is laudable, it is certainly correct to use "United States" as the name of the country in many contexts. For some countries, many people would have a hard time even knowing what country is referred to if the official name were used (e.g., Western Sahara as noted above, or North vs. South Korea). FamilySearch is making a very practical choice in using the common name, not only for the United States, but for many other countries.

Áine.ní.Donnghaile

And, if the poster prefers the longer name on the profiles of his ancestors, it is always possible to use one form as the standardized place name and the other as the place name displayed.