Etymology of Gringo

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Ginny from San Diego.

Hello, Ginny, welcome.

Hi, Ginny, welcome to the program.

Thanks.

What you got on your mind?

Well, I was wondering about the origin of the word gringo.

Gringo. Now, what got you to thinking about that here in San Diego?

Well, a few of my friends and I were talking and I just came up in conversation and we all had different ideas.

And we couldn’t agree, and I started looking things up, but it still seems to be kind of a mystery.

It’s a bit of a puzzle. What did you come across?

Well, I came across that gringo is from the Greek.

It also means he is a Greek, or it could be a pronunciation of a Greek word meaning foreigner.

Then gringo from Mexico, as in green, go, referring to the U.S. Army wearing green jackets and the Mexicans wanting to get rid of them.

So they didn’t say anda verde.

No, it doesn’t make sense.

So I think we can pitch the army theory, right?

I think maybe that’s out.

Gringo is sometimes pejorative and sometimes not.

It depends on the country.

Mm—

Sort of, you’re not from around here, aren’t you?

And it’s like, we don’t like you on the one hand.

On the other hand, it’s okay.

He or she’s a foreigner.

Mm—

Don’t worry about him.

Mm—

One more was that the Mexican cowboys would hear U.S. Cowboys singing around the campfire, Green Grow the Violets, and the rest of that folk song.

And then the Mexican cowboys would refer to the U.S. Cowboys as gringos.

I like that story.

I wish it were true.

I like that story, but…

Yeah, it’s not true.

I couldn’t find anything.

But I don’t think I heard you suggest what we believe to be the true origin of gringo.

Oh?

What would that be?

Yeah, there was a medieval Latin proverb that referred to things to a language that sounded unintelligible, and it went, Gricum est, non potes legi, which means it’s Greek, it can’t be read.

And Shakespeare picked up on that and used the phrase, it was Greek to me.

And that one makes sense to me.

There is a Spanish descendant of this proverb that’s hablar en griego, which is literally to talk in Greek.

And that was used to describe people who couldn’t speak Spanish or couldn’t speak Spanish in the same way that natives did.

And this makes the most sense to me.

I know that in ancient Greece, the word barbaros meant somebody who was a foreigner.

And supposedly the origin of that was that their language just sort of sounded like barbar.

And we get the word barbarian from barbaros.

And so to me, that has the feel of the explanation that works best.

That’s right. So in Castilian Spanish, griego can mean an unintelligible language.

And there are other senses for it as well.

So you could see how to say that somebody was a Griego or a Greek might mean that they were somebody speaking an unintelligible language.

And I think also when we see the fracturing of the meanings of the word gringo throughout the Spanish-speaking world, we begin to understand that they couldn’t have all possibly independently derived it.

They probably come from original source.

We go back to the original Castilian Spanish, and we see right away that griego is used in a particular way and gringo is used in a particular way.

So I know that when I was in Venezuela, gringo was just absolutely the standard word for some white person from the north.

In any case, so yeah, it comes from this Spanish word griego, we believe, that became transformed into gringo.

You can even hear how similar they are.

And it’s rather uncolorful and not all that exciting, but it’s probably the most accurate origin story.

If you have access to an American Heritage Dictionary, they have a pretty good word history for it.

And if you read it, it just comes up at the end and you’re like, yep, that makes a lot of sense.

They just kind of like really pin the story down in such a way that it all makes perfect logical sense.

Yeah, and you can find that online.

Right. That’s right.

That’s great. I will do that.

Okay.

Thanks for calling, Jenny.

Well, thank you so very much.

Bye-bye.

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