GRINGOS, FALSE ETYMOLOGY, AND EPITHETS

 GRINGOS, FALSE ETYMOLOGY, AND EPITHETS

  Quoting from memory, in one of his Essays with a Purpose (1954) Salvador de Madariaga—Galician, Oxford professor—mocks popular etymologists who believe outrage comes from out + rage, rather than from French outrage (Spanish ultraje). The example is apt, because the world is crowded with linguistic amateurs: backyard linguists, Sunday etymologists, improvised translators, makeshift grammarians—of every language and persuasion. I may well be one of them.

    Take gringo. According to folk etymology, the word arose during the Mexican–American War, when Mexican soldiers supposedly misheard American troops singing “Green Grow the Lilacs.” Charming—and false. Another chestnut derives gringo from greenhorn. Also wrong.
Gringo is Spanish. It is a variant of griego (“Greek”), long used to denote incomprehensible speech (“It’s Greek to me”). It entered the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española in 1869 with the definition “vale tanto como griego” and appears earlier in Esteban Echeverría’s El matadero (c. 1840). Today it is used across the Spanish-speaking world to refer to Americans, generally without insult or malice.
    Spanish, in fact, shows little enthusiasm for ethnic name-calling. Anglo-American culture, by contrast, has produced a formidable—and regrettable—catalogue of epithets aimed at belittling others: Mexicans, Italians, Irish, Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Vietnamese, French—the list is long, ugly, and well documented. One could fill pages and stir endless controversy merely by citing it.
Spanish is disarmingly literal: judío, indio, negro, gitano. No venom required. A Mexican may call me gachupín; in Argentina, I am a gallego; in Chile, a coño. None of these troubles me. Words acquire their sting not from dictionaries but from intent.
    This restraint may reflect the absence of an inferiority complex. Cultures secure in their history, language, literature, and traditions feel little need to demean others. Spain and Spanish America have had their share of political misfortune, but time has a way of correcting such things.
    Unfortunately, our world is also full of backyard xenophobes, Sunday sexists, jackleg bigots, and makeshift racists.
    So, gringos, relax. There is no threat. The only things worth fearing are bigotry, hatred, racism, and ignorance—and even writing the words makes me shudder.

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