Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
Indian (adj., n.)
The word has been a semantic problem ever since Europeans mistakenly assumed that the discovery of the Americas was the rediscovery of India and the Far East. The adjective means “of or pertaining to the country of India (or the Indian subcontinent)” and “of or pertaining to the original populations of North and South America.” The noun refers to a member of any of these populations in this hemisphere or to a citizen of the Asian country of India. In recent years, the increased sensitivity of many Americans to the possibility of ethnic slurs has made Indian a somewhat troublesome word in general if not in technical use; some insist that it be replaced by Native American(s), partly to counter the European blunder that attached the original name and partly as a reminder of who got here first.
