The Spanish language term latino (’Latino‘) has been used and abused for quite a while. Words like these can become widely popular and used very frequently, in most cases without the users making a little effort to find out about the true nature of such terms.

The word latino is used in Spanish as a short form of latinoamericano - a Latin American – i.e. a person from a Latin American country. Thus, in Spanish the term is used in a correct manner. However, the usage of this term in English is incorrect as there is a proper translation for the word latino into this language: Latin. In any case whenever there is a need to refer to the people from Latin America is more appropriate to name them by their own nationalities: Mexican, Brazilian, Chilean, Costa Rican, etc, or collectively as Latin Americans.

The term Latin American is appropriately used for distinguishing the people from the New World as not coming from Anglo America. The term is properly used to relate to this cultural aspect. Latin American is a term that has come to mean someone who is non Anglo American, and is therefore quite appropriately used to cover anyone who comes from a Latin American country independently of what language they speak.

Referring to Spanish speaking people from Spanish speaking countries of Latin America as ‘Hispanics’ is not only wrong and inappropriate – it hardly means anything at all – it’s better to use always the term Latin American as it’s more meaningful and culturally appropriate.

The term Latino – as used quite often in English and applied to language or people – is wrong, inappropriate and lacking in real meaning and because of this, its usage should be avoided.

Labeling any perceived type of language as ‘Latino Spanish’ or even Latin Spanish doesn’t mean anything, as the name for the Spanish from the New World is American Spanish.  Misleading labels lack academic validity. Thus the name American Spanish must be used when referring to the varieties of this language as coming from the American continent.