Gringaidas: notes on the Etymology of ‘Gringo’

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1676-6288.prolam.2024.218576

Keywords:

Brazil, Etymology, Gringos, Migrations, Otherness

Abstract

The present article looks at the historical etymology of the term  gringo from its birth in the Iberian Peninsula to its common use today. Using bibliographic, ethnographic, and linguistic research, we seek to unpack some of the terms meanings within a Brazilian context, while highlighting their potential as an emic or analytical category that aptly describes an increasingly numerous class of people in today’s globalized world. We argue that, despite its popular understandings and uses in other parts of Latin America, the term’s use in Brazil recovers its original connotations of “funny-speaking foreigner”, with no necessary connections to Anglo-American imperialism or whiteness. In this sense, gringo, in Brazil, is a term that – like Simmel’s “fremde” – highlights “that which is not of us but is among us”. The past 200 years of imperial encounters, however, have made the term increasingly applied to certain types of foreigners in Brazil: white Europeans or U.S. Americans.

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Author Biography

  • Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

    Assistant Professor at the Social Anthropology Graduate Program, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Email:  thaddeus.blanchette@gmail.com

References

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Published

2024-11-25

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Section

Original Article

How to Cite

Blanchette, T. G. (2024). Gringaidas: notes on the Etymology of ‘Gringo’. Brazilian Journal of Latin American Studies, 23(49), 250-269. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1676-6288.prolam.2024.218576