We (Americans) used to call it cafe latte in the early days when it was getting popular in the early 90s but we like to optimize and since latte wasn't taken yet, we just chopped off the cafe part. You can see Kramer order a cafe latte in seinfeld and most stores still have it written as cafe latte, especially hipster ones, but we just don't need to specify cafe to get the point across.
yes, that makes sense! But the American latte is a little bit different than our caffe latte / latte macchiato - for the reasons I mentioned above.
Personally, I actually prefer the American style latte to the Italian style latte macchiato! Italian Latte Macchiato is quite weak while Third Wave style Latte has more punch and you can taste the coffee more.
