Gringo

This article is about the Spanish term "gringo". For other uses of the word, see Gringo (disambiguation).

The Gringo's restaurant in Stafford, Texas.

Gringo is a slang Spanish word used in Spanish-speaking countries, principally in Latin America, to denote foreigners, often from the United States. The term can be applied to someone who is actually a foreigner, or it can denote a strong association or assimilation into foreign (particularly US) society and culture. The term is often encountered by people from the US traveling abroad to Spanish-speaking countries. The American Heritage Dictionary classifies gringo as "offensive slang," "usually disparaging," and "often disparaging." However, the term can also be used to simply identify a foreigner and does not always carry a negative connotation.

The word was used in Spain long before it crossed the Atlantic to denote foreign, non-native speakers of Spanish. Although it has various anecdotal etymologies, and various connotative or interpretive meanings, its ultimate source appears to be "griego", the Spanish word for "a Greek person" that serves as a colloquial shorthand for any foreign (non-Spanish) person.

The word yanqui is used for any person from any part of the USA, and normally nowhere else. It is transliterated from Yankee, but the internal US distinction between those from the North and South USA is irrelevant outside the USA.

Etymology

The word is first attested in Terreros y Pando's Diccionario castellano con las voces de Ciencias y Artes y sus correspondientes en las 3 lenguas francesa, latina e italiana in 1786, which says:

gringos llaman en Málaga a los extranjeres que tienen cierta especie de acento, que los priva de una locución fácil y natural Castellana; y en Madrid dan el mismo nombre con particularidad a los irlandeses

'gringos' is what they call foreigners who have a certain kind of accent which prevents them from speaking easy and natural Castillian; and in Madrid they give the same name in particular to the Irish

Most scholars agree that gringo is a variant of griego 'Greek' (cf. Greek to me); but it has also been argued that griego > gringo is phonetically unlikely (it requires two separate steps, griego > grigo, and after, grigo > gringo), and that it may instead come from the language of the Spanish Romani, Caló, as a variant of (pere)gringo 'wayfarer, stranger'.

Its entry in a 1817 French-Spanish dictionary, written by Antonio de Capmany, includes:

.. hablar en griego, en guirigay, en gringo.

... to speak in Greek, in "guirigay", in "gringo". Gringo, griego: aplícase a lo que se dice o escribe sin entenderse.

Gringo, Greek : applies to what is said or written without understanding it.

In English

"Gringo" has been in use in the English language since the 19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the term in an English source is in John W. Audubon's Western Journal of 1849; Audubon recalls that he and his associates were derided and called "Gringoes" while passing through the town of Cerro Gordo, Veracruz. The earliest recorded use of the word in an English-language context is in an 1871 article from the Albuquerque, New Mexico newspaper The Republican Review, which describes an assault by three Mexican American men on an evidently Anglo-American woman, whom they called "a gringo bitch."

Other Proposed Etymologies

United States Army

One folk etymology that is widely repeated among Mexican-Americans as well as throughout the Southwest United States was that during the Mexican-American War the Mexicans who knew little English referred to the Americans' green uniforms and would shout, "Green go!", meaning "Leave our country." But, the U.S. military in the Mexican-American War did not wear the color green. They were still wearing blue at this time. During W.W.I the uniforms were tan, and not until W.W.II did the U.S. army begin to wear green.

Origin from Henry VIII's Song "Green Grows the Holly" and Variants

A more supportable etymology comes from a song sung around their campfires by invading Yankees, not just Anglo but Irish and German. When the Mexican-American War began in 1846, from a few to several hundred recently immigrated Irish, German and other Catholic Americans who were sent by the U.S. government to fight against Mexico came to doubt why they were fighting against a Catholic country for a Protestant one, combined with resentment over mistreatment from their haughty Anglo-Protestant officers, and deserted to join forces with Mexico. Led by Captain John Riley of County Galway, they called themselves St. Patrick's Battalion (in Spanish, Batallón de San Patricio). Green was the color of the Irish, who also first used the Gaelic slogan Erin go Bragh ("Ireland forever"), but more importantly the soldiers frequently sang "Green Grow the Rushes Oh!", based on a Robert Burns poem, or an earlier Scottish tune "Green Grows the Laurel", which they called "Green Grow the Lilacs", which traces back to a song composed in the early 1500s by English king Henry VIII called "Green Grows the Holly". Mexican soldiers are said to make out the repeated refrain "Green Grow", reporting back that that might be what they called themselves.

Further support for this theory comes from the fact that it seems to not have been explicitly documented first by Mexicans, but by Anglos who heard it used against them by Mexicans as a racial epithet during the 1846-8 war (see above). Despite the infrequent use of the word gringo earlier in dictionaries, it was the 1846-8 war where the word gringo took on a life of its own that is peculiar to the U.S.-Mexican experience.

Brazil & Portugal

In Brazil, the meaning and use of gringo differs significantly from the Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.

Etymologically, the word is documented as not native to the European Portuguese language, but was borrowed from Spanish since the 19th century at least., as the word "grego" (no i) for Greek in Portuguese would not have given "gringo." Also in Brazilian and Portuguese popular culture, someone unintelligible is traditionally said to speak Greek (or, much more recently, Chinese).

Absorption from Spanish is also reflected in that the word usage is not naturally widespread and only generally in regions exposed to tourism like Rio de Janeiro. There, the word means basically any foreigner, North American, European or even Latin American, though generally applying more to any English-speaking person and not necessarily based on race or skin color but rather on attitude and clothing. The word for fair skinned and blond people would be rather "alemão" (i.e., German), "russo" (Russian) or "galego" (Galician).

In São Paulo, the word is used to refer to any foreigner at all. The feminine form is "gringa". This usage is evident on the fact that MTV Brazil's foreign-programming daily track, during which mostly American and British MTV reality shows are broadcast, is named "MTV Gringa". MTV "Station" is a feminine term in Portuguese.

In Rio Grande do Sul, the word is used to refer to Italian or German descendants.

In Portugal the word is seldom used and so is "Ianque" (Portuguese spelling of Yank). It is never used in a formal context. It specifically describes someone from the USA (as does "Ianque"), and is not related to any particular physical or racial features.

Other uses

In Mexican cuisine, a gringa is a flour tortilla with al pastor meat with cheese, heated on the comal and then served with a salsa de chile (chile sauce).

In the 1950s, the blue fifty Mexican peso bill was called an ojo de gringa ("gringa's eye").

Gringolandia

The word Gringolandia (Gringoland) is a slightly disparaging single-word name for the United States of America, similar to, say Krautland for Germany during the Second World War. A book about the USA has even been written with that title. -landia (transliterated from English -land, meaning land of) is often used as a suffix in Spanish. As a random example, "Movieland" is used informally in English, "Cinelandia" in Spanish.

The term is also used by natives of Quito, Ecuador, to describe a sector of the city, La Mariscal Sucre. This neighborhood is the entertainment and tourism hub of Quito, and subsequently attracts many foreigners. Hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops in La Mariscal cater to tourists, students, expats, and business travellers coming from many parts of the world, particularly from English-speaking countries, and so it is jokingly nicknamed Gringolandia.

Meanings

A Gringa reads the Gringo Gazette in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

• The Anglosphere: Latino migrants to the U.S. occasionally use the term as a more derogatory synonym of Anglo. however, it is also said the term may apply to anyone who lives in the U.S. regardless of race.
• In Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela the term applies exclusively for U.S. citizens, widely accepted as a colloquial demonym. Depending on the context, it may or may not be pejorative.
• In Central America, the word is not pejorative. In Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama the term refers to U.S. citizens (regardless of race). In Honduras, the term is non-pejorative and is used to refer to Westerners, including in some cases referring to foreigners who are not Latino, such as Japanese and Koreans. In the Dominican Republic it also means a non-free range store bought chicken (pollo gringo), it's also a way to call the people from the United States, often non derogatorily. In Puerto Rico, the term refers to U.S. citizens in the U.S. mainland.
• In the countries of South America where this term is used, the word is not pejorative. In some countries it may be used to refer to any foreigner who does not speak Spanish as a native language, or in Brazil, someone who does not speak Portuguese as a native language, but in other countries it is used just or especially to refer to U.S. citizens; it may also be used to describe a blond or brunette white native person with soft facial features and light colored eyes. For instance, it is a popular nickname.
  • In Peru the word gringo is used all over the country among the white and non white population. It is used to refer to white people, including the peruvian white people, particularly those with fairer features. It is not pejorative.
  • In Ecuador the word gringo can be used to refer to foreigners from any country, not only the United States, though the likelihood of being described as a gringo increases the closer one's physical appearance is to that of a stereotypical Northern European.
  • In Chile the word gringo refers both to non-Spanish speaking foreigners, especially of Northern European descent, and also to United States citizens of any origin.

See also

• Anglo
• Bolillo
• Canuck
• Farang
• Gabacho
• Gaijin
• Jingai
• Goy
• Gringo Trail
• Güero (disambiguation) (Huero)
• Guiri
• Gweilo
• List of terms for white people in non-Western cultures
• Old Gringo
• Pakeha
• Pocho
• Use of the word American
• Yankee
• Mat Salleh