By at least the early 1900s, there is some record of use of Hispanic to refer to lands and people colonized by the Spanish in the Americas-the so-called “New World.” How activists got Hispanic onto the US censusīut Hispanic didn’t spread in the American English lexicon until at least the mid-1970s.
Historically in English, Hispanic referred to Spain and its people in the Iberian peninsula. In popular use, Hispanic can generally be used to describe anyone from (or descended from) Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, or Spain itself.įirst recorded in English in the late 1500s, Hispanic derives from the Latin hispānicus, adjective of Hispānia, meaning and source of the name Spain. Hispanic is an adjective that generally means “relating to Spanish-speaking Latin America” or to “people of Spanish-speaking descent.” It can also be used as a noun when referring to a US resident who is “of Spanish or Spanish-speaking Latin-American descent.” In another way of looking at it, Hispanic is linguistic and Latino is terrestrial.
Latinx is a gender-neutral alternative for Latino/a.Latino and Latina specifically concern those coming from Latin American countries and cultures, regardless of whether the person speaks Spanish.Hispanic specifically concerns the Spanish-language-speaking Latin America and Spain.When it comes to the words themselves, there’s an important difference to Hispanic and Latino: Let’s explore the distinctions between Hispanic and Latino and Latina (and Latinx). It might sound complicated, but don’t fret! There’s a key to knowing when to use one or the other: one term is related to the language and the other to the land and culture. But even today, Hispanic and Latino, or the gender-neutral Latinx, remain inherently entangled, and are still easily misused by even the most perspicacious student of geography. Over the last several decades, as the evolution-and some might say revolution-of American culture and politics has paved the way for more nuanced discussions about race and heritage, the discrepancies between the words have widened. But Hispanic and Latino are properly used for different purposes, and describe qualities of two different populations that sometimes overlap and sometimes don’t. It’s easy to see why these two words are so often conflated and frequently confused. From boxes on census forms to drop-down menus on job applications, we often see Hispanic and Latino positioned side by side, seemingly as interchangeable terms to describe the race and heritage of a population that makes up nearly 20% of the United States.