Who gives a shit ? People refer to the People ' s Republic of China as China or the Russian Federation as Russia , why is it illogical to refer to the United States of America as America ? As for the continent , North America is a continent , and South America is a continent . The landmass which is North America plus South america is not a continent , but contains two continents , I don ' t see your confusion . You could refer to the landmass as America and it would be 100 % accurate , but in what context would you be referring to the entire land mass ? North and South America are very very different like Europe and Asia even though they share the same landmass . tldr America isn ' t a continent , but a land mass containing two continents North America the obvious stuff like Mexico and north of it and Central America Panama and everything north of it and South America containing everything south of Panama .