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I know the naming of the country "Panem" already has at least a couple meanings in the Hunger Games books and movies. For starters, it translates to "bread", and is even more fitting when Plutarch mentions the phrase panem et circenses.

I was thinking maybe the author also intended to incorporate "Pan-Am", as in Pan America, into the name of the country as well, since Panem seems to include all of the former USA, and possibly Canada as well.

Is there any documented evidence that this, indeed, the case?

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  • Connection to Peeta bread and his family's bakery...wishing he had thrown his loaf of bread to the pigs.
    – user28091
    Nov 24, 2015 at 0:34

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Judging from this interview between Suzanne Collins and Scholastic, there doesn't seem to be any other meaning in the name of Panem other than the Latin phrase which is why she chose it:

In keeping with the classical roots, I send my tributes into an updated version of the Roman gladiator games, which entails a ruthless government forcing people to fight to the death as popular entertainment. The world of Panem, particularly the Capitol, is loaded with Roman references. Panem itself comes from the expression “Panem et Circenses” which translates into “Bread and Circuses.”

I think it's unlikely there's any connection to Pan-Am because the books are very clear that Panem used to be America, so it wouldn't add anything. From the first chapter of The Hunger Games:

Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read. It’s the same story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America.

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    I'd say that the overt reference to North America suggests that Pan-Am IS a possible other meaning to the word Panem. The place was once called North America, which is currently divided into 3 countries (Mexico, United States of America, and Canada). Uniting all of North America leads to the prefix "pan-", which literally means "all". So "all America" could easily be a meaning of "Panem". As a sometimes-author myself, I know it adds layers to give place names (and character names) multiple meanings. Jul 31, 2014 at 19:48
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I was thinking maybe the author also intended to incorporate "Pan-Am", as in Pan America, into the name of the country as well, since Panem seems to include all of the former USA, and possibly Canada as well.

That reasoning does not make very much sense. As you say, Pan-Am would mean Pan-America, which translates to "The complete/whole America". From wiki:

The Americas, or America, also known as the New World, are the combined continental landmasses of North America and South America, in the Western Hemisphere.

Panem however only covers North America, so it seems like quite a stretch to name it Pan-America.

Panem

Even if you take into account that many US Americans like to limit the term "America" to the USA, the prefix "pan-" clearly indicates that you mean the whole thing, as in Pan-Africa or the Pan-American Highway.

Together with the fact that there seems to be no evidence for a third meaning in the books or the movie, one can conclude that most likely this was not an intended meaning of Panem.

Image credit: User Shootingarrowsatthesky on Hunger Games Wiki

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