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To: ClearCase_guy; All
Here is what a reader posted as a reply who has obliviously studied the term Latino

The term "latino" is strange. It is derived from Latin, which in turn is derived from the region of Italy, Lazio (Latium in Latin) that surrounds Rome. Yet nowadays in the official vocabulary of the US government, it means someone who somehow is tied to the Iberian peninsula. One might have guessed that attention would have been restricted to Hispanics because the US has a lot of immigrants from Mexico who have Spanish surnames. But no. For some reason, the definition has been expanded to include Portugual and by extension Brazil. Romanians and French are not included, even they also speak a language derived from Latin. More strangely, Italians are not included, not even those from Lazio, who are the only true Latini. In the US, you don't even need a genetic "Latin" ancestry. The surname is enough. So a full-blooded Native American from Mexico with the surname of, say, Martinez, qualifies as a Latino, but someone from Rome does not, even if his surname is Marra (an old Laziale name).

12 posted on 10/16/2014 4:54:58 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin
English is mostly a Germanic language but has some Latin influence.

French (mostly Romance, aka Roman, aka 'vulgar' Latin), and of course Italian and Spanish are purer Latin. Portuguese is primarily Romance as French. They're all Indo-European languages.

I think, at the end of the day, they somehow had to categorize or classify people and surnames. All in all, it's all Latin or versions of it, except English, which has more Germanic influence than Latin.

17 posted on 10/16/2014 5:18:03 AM PDT by odds
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