Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.
While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.
While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.
Ireland is part of the British Isles, so you could even call people from the Republic of Ireland british (and then run away really fast).
I recommend not doing this 😂 I prefer to call the British isles “the European archipelago” :)
TEA
And saying North America includes Canada, and I think out of respect to the Canadians they don’t wanna be lumped together with us