Hispanic & Latino

Hispanic (pronounced hi-span-ik)

(1) Relating to, characteristic of, or derived from Spain or Spanish-speaking countries (applied especially to Spanish-speaking Latin America.

(2) A person whose primary or native language is Spanish.

(3) As Hispanic-American (and the rarer Hispano-American), a citizen or resident of the United States who is of Spanish or Spanish-speaking Latin-American descent; often used to refer to non-Spanish speakers, except for technical use, it’s now often replaced by the more general Latino.

(4) The Iberian Peninsula, when under the control of Ancient Rome (now in historic reference only).

1575-1585: From the Latin hispānicus (Spanish), the adjectival derivation of the Classical Latin (and Ancient Greek) Hispania (Spain) and Hispanus/Hispanos (Spaniard), ultimately probably of Celtiberian origin.   In English the word is attested from the sixteenth century, spreading to American English) by the nineteenth.  The construct is hispania +‎ -icus.  Hispania was long thought derived from a Phoenician/Punic name ‘i shapan, (land of hyraxes), cognate to the Hebrew שָׁפָן‎ (shafan) (hyrax), supposedly applied because the Phoenicians thought the land's many rabbits resembled hyraxes.  This theory (or legend) was repeated by many Roman authors and may explain why Hispania is depicted with rabbits on some Roman coins.  Later scholars however have cast doubt on the story and suggested possible Phoenician etyma, the most supported is ‘i ṣapun ((is)land to the north).  The –icus suffix was added to a noun or verb to form an adjective.  It was from the i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original cases but later used freely.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic –igaz, the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic -eigs, the Proto-Slavic –ьcь, the last having long fossilized into a nominal agent suffix  but originally probably also served adjectival functions.  The words Spain, Spanish, and Spaniard are of the same etymology as Hispanus.

Latino (pronounced luh-tee-noh (U) or la-tee-noh (non-U))

(1) Of or relating to people of Latin American origin or descent, especially those living in the United States.

(2) A person of Latin American origin or descent, especially one living in the United States.

1939: A creation of American English borrowed from Spanish adjective latino, in this context short for latinoamericano (Latin American) and thus an ellipsis of that form, from the Latin latīnus (pertaining to Latium, the region of Italy around Rome), possibly from the primitive Indo-European base stela- (to spread, to extend, hence flat country as opposed to mountainous).  Latino was first attested as a prefix from 1939 as a combining form of Latin, from ablative of the Latin latīnus.  It began to enter common use in the US in 1945-1950 as Latino referring to the places or people with Latinate or Romance language in common, the construct essentially a truncated merging of Latin + americano, the adjectival sense of Latino-American (al la African-American) first noted in 1974.  In noun form it should be gender-neutral but has always tended to male association; Latina is the feminine form and there’s long been the gender-neutral Latinx but a more interesting recent invention is latin@, the @ said to resemble both the feminine ending/element “a” and the masculine “o”, though the vagaries of pronunciation probably escape all but native Spanish speakers.

Changes in conventions of use

Latino and Hispanic, though laden with associative connotations from decades of use in the US, refer only to a person's origin and ancestry; a Latin(o/a/x/@) or Hispanic person can be any race or color, the former coming from anywhere in the defined geographical space, the latter the Spanish-speaking sub-set.  Among etymologists and political geographers, there has long been debate about whether the Caribbean can in whole or in part be considered as Latino although some are certainly Hispanic. Some suggest those from French Guiana should be accepted as Latino because French shares linguistic roots with Spanish and Portuguese which does seem a tenuous point, little different about whether people from English-speaking Belize and Guyana and Dutch-speaking Suriname truly fit under the category since their cultures and histories are so distinct.

Latin America, extends from the US-Mexico border to the southern Chilean islands, encompassing many countries, most of them predominately Spanish-speaking, a legacy of colonization.  In the US, the terms Hispanic and Latino (Latina for women, sometimes written as the gender-neutral Latinx or Latin@) were adopted in an attempt, initially for administrative purposes, loosely to group immigrants and their descendants.  The early post-war use of the terms, mostly by statisticians, epidemiologists and other academics does indicate there was adherence to the technical meanings but this dissipated as the words, especially Hispanic, entered mainstream media and public discourse.  By the mid-1950s, Hispanic tended to be used to reference everything and everyone south of the US-Mexico border, regardless of language spoken but since revisions to statistical categories during the Nixon administration (1969-1974) (the change first reflected in the 1980 Census form), the blanket term has tended towards the more correct Latino, the trend accelerating in recent years.  Despite this, some do still use the terms interchangeably.

Lindsay Lohan alighting from helicopter, São Paulo Airport, Brazil, April 2013.

Hispanic is generally accepted as a narrower term that includes people only from Spanish-speaking Latin America, including those countries and territories of the Caribbean or from Spain itself.  Thus, a Brazilian could be Latino and non-Hispanic, a Spaniard could be Hispanic and non-Latino, and a Colombian could adopt both terms.  Perhaps seeking to clarify things, the 2010 US Census helpfully listed both terms specifically mentioning the Spanish-speaking areas of the Caribbean but somewhat vaguely excluded non-Spanish speaking countries.  Whether pragmatically or for other reasons, when filling-out the form, many Latin American immigrants and descendants simply stated their countries of origin.  It may be the case Hispanic is on the linguistic treadmill and should thus be avoided.