Fulano, Fulanito, Fulanito de Tal

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Adriana. I’m calling from Miami, Florida.

Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

In Miami, there’s a big Cuban population. My family’s Cuban-American.

And we have this word that’s similar to John Doe in English.

And it’s fulanito or fulano.

Some people also say fulanito de tal.

And it basically means John Doe, you know, why are you hanging out with fulano all the time?

And I was just wondering where that came from, since it doesn’t really sound like a name.

Fulano, F-U-L-A-N-O, right?

-huh.

Yeah. So you’ve known this probably your whole life.

Yeah, my whole life.

Yeah. And you’ve probably heard it from other Spanish speakers, not just Cubans and Cubans-Americans.

Okay. And you’ve perfectly explained it. It’s pretty much like John Doe in English, right?

Mm—

Yeah. This has an incredible history. It shows the richness and the depth of the Spanish language because it not only goes back to Arabic, it goes back to Egyptian.

Wow.

Yeah. It’s one of those great…

Wow. I love knowing this.

Yes. Yes. I’m excited. I’m very excited about this.

So it basically means so-and-so. Like we use this in English. We’re like, yeah, so-and-so over there, he’s gonna…

We just mean that a person that we can’t really name because either we don’t want to name them or we don’t know their name or it’s not important to give their name, that sort of thing, right?

And so it comes from the Arabic Fulan, probably originally from an Egyptian word meaning this name.

And it’s related to words throughout the Western Semitic language group.

So it’s got this connection to languages that are still spoken throughout North Africa.

Yeah, pretty cool.

Also, there’s connections to a word used in Portuguese and the smaller, similar languages used throughout the Iberian Peninsula.

Do you know, let me ask you, Adriana, do you know the Spanish version of Tom, Dick, and Harry when we’re talking about like,

Yeah, there you were partying on the street with any Tom, Dick, and Harry’s if you didn’t have homework to do?

Do you know what the Spanish version of that is?

I don’t.

I mean, there’s obviously some names that are common in Spanish, like Andres and Jose and Juan.

Have you ever heard of Fulano, Mengano, y Sultano?

No, I haven’t.

Or Sultano, Peringano, y Perensejo?

No.

Is that what that is?

Yeah, so those are the ones that you might say.

Those might be more Iberian Spanish, like in Spain.

Interesting.

And not so much throughout the Latin American Spanish.

So Fulano, Mengano, y Sultano was the Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Yeah, what I always heard in Argentina was Fulano, Fulani.

Oh, Fulano, Fulani, yeah.

So that’s the first and last name.

So there’s a bunch of those.

That’s just some of what we know about Fulano.

So, yeah, it’s a cool word used throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

It’s a placeholder word, but it’s one of those core words that came into Spanish from when the Iberian Peninsula was controlled by the Moors.

Yeah, and that’s really interesting because usually those words start with A-L, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

This has been great to hear you guys on the other end of my song.

Thanks for calling. Call again sometime.

Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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