In the United States, Latino refers to non-Anglo-American citizens who are living in the United States of America and are of Latin American background, also referred to as Hispanic. The feminine form of the word is Latina. "Latino" is a shortened form of the Spanish (in the United States) word for a Latin American individual, "latinoamericano." The non-biased interpretation would reveal that "latino", in Spanish, means only that something possesses a Latin quality--most often referring to the Latin language or the culture around the former Roman Empire. In Spain, "latinoamericano" is rarely, if ever, abbreviated to "latino". As a general guideline, in Europe, "latin" or "latino" is understood as being from a country that was formerly part of the Roman Empire (and played a large role in it)--naturally this includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and by extension of cultural fusion, Greece. Though the British Isles were conquered by Rome, they are generally not included in this definition.

Latin America refers to countries in South America and North America (including Central America and the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken there. Most frequently the term Latino is restricted to immigrants from either Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries and their descendants. Inhabitants of the French-speaking areas of Haiti, French Guiana, and the French West Indies are generally not considered to be Latinos; they are typically thought to have more in common culturally with English-speaking West Indians than they do with residents of the mainland of Central and South America.

Latin also refers to the peoples whose native language descends from Latin (language of Ancient Rome) known as Romance languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Catalan.

(In Italy, the term is sometimes used to denote a person from the Mezzogiorno, the region of the country located generally south of Rome, since in the Middle Ages this region had considerably less Celtic and Germanic influences than northern Italy; one example of this usage was those made by Dante in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto XXII, line 65, and Canto XXIX, lines 90 and 92).)

Related terms

• Acadian
• Afro-Argentinian
• Afro-latino
• Asian Latino
• Afro-Peruvian
• Ladino
• Boricua
• Cajun
• Chicano
• Gallic
• Hispanic America
• Hispanic American
• Ibero-American
• Lusitanic
• Moors
• Mulatto
• Québécois
• Quisqueyano

See also

• Caribbean
• Latin America
• Latin Union
• Latin rap
• List of U.S. cities with Hispanic majority populations
• Latin Union
• Western Hemisphere
• Western culture