Gringo

Jason Is A GRINGO!

=

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

"Three Gringos in Central America and Venezuela", 1896 book by Richard Harding Davis (poster by Edward Penfield)

Gringo is a slang Spanish and Portuguese word used in Spanish-speaking and Portuguese countries, principally in Latin America, to denote foreigners, often from the United States, the United Kingdom, or Westerners in general (but not in Brazil where the term applies to any foreigner, including other Latin Americans). 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 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 carry a negative connotation according to the definition in the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy which defines the Spanish language.

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, in some countries, as a colloquial shorthand for any foreign (non-Spanish) person (q.v.).

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 extranjeros 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.

Johann Jakob von Tschudi observed that the term "gringo" was used in Lima, Peru in the 1840s:

Gringo is a nickname applied to Europeans. It is probably derived from Griego (Greek). The Germans say of anything incomprehensible, "That sounds like Spanish,"--and in like manner the Spaniards say of anything they do not understand, "That is Greek."

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.

Folk Etymologies

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

A common folk etymology makes gringo come 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 question why they were fighting against a Catholic country for a Protestant one, combined with resentment over mistreatment by their haughty Anglo-Protestant officers, and deserted to join forces with Mexico. Led by Captain Jon 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 16th century 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.

Some see support for this theory 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). This suggest that it was the 1846-48 war (where the word gringo took on a life of its own) that is peculiar to the U.S.-Mexican experience.

Another possible basis for "gringo" finds its roots in the war between the United States and Mexico. Many American troops wore greenish uniforms. Mexicans are said to have chanted "green go," meaning in rough phonetic translation, "green, go [home]."

These folk etymologies are obviously false, since all of them place the origin of the word in the 19th Century, but the word has been registered from the 18th Century, and even made its way to the Diccionario castellano con las voces de Ciencias y Artes y sus correspondientes en las 3 lenguas francesa, latina e italiana (1786) by Esteban de Terreros y Pando. The word is also used in South American literature. In El matadero de Echevarría (1840), and in Martín Fierro de Hernández (1872, 1879), the word gringo refers to persons from England.

Brazil & Portugal

In Brazilian and Portuguese popular culture, someone unintelligible is traditionally said to speak Greek.

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. Generally it applies more to any English-speaking person, not necessarily based on race or skin color but on attitude and clothing. The more popularly-used terms for fair-skinned and blond people would be "alemão" (i.e., German), "russo" (Russian) or "galego" (Galician).

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").

Meanings

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

• In Mexico, El Salvador and Colombia the term applies for U.S. citizens or Westerners in general, widely accepted as a colloquial demonym. Depending on the context, it may or may not be pejorative.
• In Central America, the word is not viewed as pejorative by users of the word. In Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama the term refers to U.S. citizens (regardless of race). In Cuba the term "Yuma" is also used but means the same thing. In Honduras, the term is not viewed as pejorative by users of the word and is used to refer to Westerners, mostly to U.S. Americans. 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 not viewed as 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 viewed as only mildly pejorative by users of the word. 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 Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru the word refers to light-skinned, blonde haired people, whether local or foreign. There can be a pejorative connotation depending on the context of the sentence. In Argentinian Spanish, gringo is simply a synonym for blonde.
  • 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 Venezuela the word is used specifically to denote foreigners hailing from the U.S., regardless of physical characteristics, and it is accepted as a colloquial demonym without a pejorative connotation (unless so used in context). For European foreigners, the term "Musiú" (Moo-see-oo') is applied, a bastardization of the French "Monsieur."

See also

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