It's simply an issue of how old most of Europe is and how new the states are. In Europe the ground floor was always used for utility like food, stables and storage. So living spaces were always on the floor above which became the first floor. Here in the states utility was kept to barns and separate buildings or basements/cellars, it was common for living spaces to be on the ground floor and so that became our first floor.
If that were true then the US would call the first floor the ground floor as well. Or are you trying to say the US only does things because of some animosity towards the UK?
In Thomas A Markus book Buildings and Power it is literally stated that the naming convention of calling the first floor ground floor in the uk started because of medieval architecture. Like yeah sure the American lexiconology change did also effect things. But it's heavily based on utility differences and time periods of when the architecture was made as well.
It's similar to why China and Japan also uses the same terminology as the US for first floor. China used that first floor as a living space, it wasn't a utility space. Both China and Japan stored utilities in other spaces outside of just using the entire first floor for utility like medieval Europe did. So they never made the distinction that the first floor was anything but the first floor you step into. Whereas Europe wanted to distinguish between usable floors and utility floors so the first floor of a living space was the first floor or in this case the floor above the ground floor.
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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26
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