What is the difference between Hispanic and Latino?

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Dan

Hispanic is a subset of Latino, and Latino is a subset of Latin.

Hispanic is a person of any race who has a linguistic, genetic and/or cultural heritage from Spain or its colonies.

Lusitanic is a person of any race who has a linguistic, genetic and/or cultural heritage fro Portugal or its colonies.

Hispanics and Lusitanics are Latinos, but being Latino does not guarantee that you're Hispanic or Lusitanic.

Latinos are part of a larger group which are the Latins. Latins are people, basically of any race, who have a linguistic, genetic and/or cultural heritage tracing to any of the original European Latin countries that in turn were part of the Roman Empire and have a local modern version of the Latin language. These would include Latinos, but also people from France and French Quebec, Italy, Romania, Spain and Portugal.

I don't really know what that means if you are Basque however. The Basques speak Euskera, which is not a Latin language, but maybe they have some genetic heritage. For that matter some Greeks could be said to be Latin because there was cross-over in the old Magna Graecia region.

Some of the English have Latin blood too from Roman Britain, and the same can be said of Bavaria, Germany. The original Latins themselves, in Rome, were already a motley crew tracing ancestry from Latium and according to the Aeneid a strong lineage from Troy, which was a Mycenaean area in ancient Anatolia or Turkey. So some of the Turkish were sort of Latin forebears.

As Rome grew and conquered, incoming blood from the Celts, more Greeks, Macedonians, North Africans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, etc, came to Rome and joined the legions, conquered and left descendants. So in a sense all Mediterraneans are "Latin", and anyone else whose ancestral homeland was part of the Roman Empire.

That's why it would just be easier to say you're Spanish, or you're Colombian, or Peruvian, or Italian, or Basque, or French, and leave the rest to your personal genealogy.

Vivi Starre

that's not ignorant, it's a good question.
I've asked this question too and I'm Chilean American

Anyways, i can't give you a legit answer but back in the day when I took a course in Latin American Culture and civilization I learned that the term hispanic came into speech somewhere in the early early 70s.
I read that the Nixon Administration had coined the term for the latinos living in the States.
I wish i could remember the details =/ sorry. but if you google it i'm sure something has to pop up!
I do know though that a few people I know, from spanish speaking countries, dislike the term hispanic because of that political attachement which was meant to separate the races, or so they say.

weirdly, I prefer hispanic though but i think that's because I grew up with that term.

Latino i think refered to those living in Latin America but not referring to Spain at all!

cisne n.egro

I am Brazilian, Brazil was colonized by Portuguese and not for Spanish, soon we are not Hispanics, in south America that were countries colonized by French, that they are people of language of Latin origin but are not Spanish.
Only 30% of the population of the South America speak Spanish, 50% speak Portuguese, and 20% speak English, French, Dutch and native languages.

Unlike what thinks nor all of the countries of South America and Central America were colonized for Spanish. some were colonized by English, French, Dutchmen and Portuguese.

Dr.John L

The term Hispanic is preferred. However since some countries like Brazil speak Portuguese and not Spanish, they prefer the term Latino. Brazil was a a Portuguese colony, while the rest of Latin America were Spanish colonies.

AttorneyKearney

Spanish is refferred more to the language and to people from Spain, latins are reffered to people who are from any of the spanish speaking countries in Latin America or Spain.

Lic.Gregory Kearney Lawson.

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