An Unnoticed Early Attestation of gringo ‘Foreigner’: Implications for Its Origin

²Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. John Jay Allen, 2 vols (Madrid: Cátedra, 2005), II, 19, 185.

¹See Joan Corominas and José A. Pascual, Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano y hispánico, 6 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 1980–91), III, 211–12, s.v. griego. This explanation had first been given currency in English-language scholarship by Katharine Ward Parmalee, ‘Gringo’, The Romanic Review, 9 (1918), 108–10, albeit without supporting evidence.

³José Hernández, Martín Fierro: comentarios, notas y vocabulario, ed. Eleuterio F. Tiscornia (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 1971), s.v. gringo, 557–59. He notes that in Hernández the term refers to Italian immigrants. Earlier, Leo Spitzer, in a review of Rudolf Grossmann's Das ausländische Sprachgut im Spanischen des Rio de la Plata (Hamburg: Seminar für Romanische Sprache und Literatur, 1926), called gringo ‘lautmalend’ but the examples of roughly comparable words from Italian, Spanish and French with –ng– lack relevance (Litteraturblatt für Germanische und Romanische Philologie, 48 [1927] 431–35 [p. 435]). A year later Spitzer derived gringo from Gregorio (< Gregorius), with no explanatory comment, but would still not discount the possible effect of onomatopoeia (‘Zu Literaturblatt 1927, S. 434’, Litteraturblatt für Germanische und Romanische Philologie, 49 [1928], 86). This latter derivation had also been briefly stated in Beiträge zur Romanischen Wortbildungslehre, which Spitzer co-authored with Ernst Gamillscheg (Genève: Leo S. Olschki, 1921), 126, n. 1. This explanation subsequently found the support of Pedro Henríquez Ureña, El español en Méjico, los Estados Unidos y la América Central, Vol. IV of Biblioteca de dialectología hispanoamericana (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Univ. de Buenos Aires, 1938), 55 s.v. gringo and n. 4. Yet there is no discussion of a comparable intrusive –n– in, for example, Emilio Alarcos Llorach's authoritative Fonología española (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1961).

⁴ Hamel's Bilingual Dictionary of Mexican Spanish, ed. Bernard H. Hamel, 3^rd rev. ed. (Beverly Hills: Bilingual Press, 2002), 193; several extended or figurative meanings are also noted.

⁵Roberto Ares Pons, ‘Gringo y gaucho: dos enigmas etimológicos’, Plural: Revista Cultural de Excelsior, 191 (1987), 53–55. Earlier studies are Américo Paredes, ‘On Gringo, Greaser and Other Neighborly Names’, in Singers and Storytellers, ed. Mody C. Boatright (Dallas: Southern Methodist U. P., 1962), 285–90; Robert H. Fuson, ‘The Origin of the Word Gringo’, in Singers and Storytellers, 282–84; and Charles E. Ronan, ‘¿Qué significa gringo?’, Historia Mexicana, 8 (1959), 549–56.

⁶Corominas and Pascual, Diccionario, III, 508–10, s.v. jerga II.

⁷Esteban de Terreros y Pando, El diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes, 4 vols (Madrid: Imp. de la viuda Ibarra …, 1786–93), II, 240; cited with some slight variation in Corominas and Pascual.

⁸Serafín Estébanez Calderón, Escenas andaluzas (Barcelona/Madrid: B. González, 1847), 113, cited in Corominas and Pascual. This edition was not available to the present author but a similar pairing ‘gringos y … gabachos’ (the French or people living near the Pyrenees) is found in the mouth of the cantaor ‘El Planeta’ in the sketch ‘Asamblea general’, Escenas andaluzas (Madrid: Lib. y Casa Edit. Hernando, 1926), 292.

⁹Similarly cited in Corominas and Pascual. In the novela Insolación la Duquesa here contrasts native Spanish ways with the pretensions of French and English styles, after one of the other conversationalists had paired ‘patriotismo’ and ‘flamenquería’ (Emilia Pardo Bazán, Insolación y Morrina [dos historias amorosas] [Madrid: Administración, 1891], 23–24). In the modern lexicographical context, gringo is first noted in Miguel de Toro y Gisbert's pointedly titled ‘Voces andaluzas (o usadas por autores andaluces) que faltan en el Diccionario de la Academia Española’, Revue Hispanique, 49 (1920), 313–647 (p. 464). He notes perceptively: ‘La Acad. da esta voz como sinónimo de Griego, y añade que sólo se usa en la frase hablar en gringo . Sin embargo la voz es antigua y tiene significado más extenso’.

¹⁰Luis Usoz y Río, previously unpublished word list, in Margarita Torrione, Diccionario caló-castellano de don Luis Usoz y Río: un manuscrito del siglo XIX (Perpignan: Univ. de Perpignan, 1987), 42.

¹¹Modern overviews of Caló are found in three studies by Ignasí-Xavier Adiego: ‘The Spanish Gypsy Vocabulary of Manuscript 3929, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (18^th century): A Rereading’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 5^th Series, 8 (1998), 125–43; ‘Del Romani comú als calós ibèrics’, LLengua i Literatura: Revista Anual de la Societat Catalona de Llengua i Literatura, 15 (2004), 211–36; and ‘The First Caló Dictionary Ever Published in Spain (Trujillo, 1844): An Analysis of its Sources’, Romani Studies, Series 5, 15 (2005), 125–43. See, too, Peter Bakker, ‘Notes on the Genesis of Caló and Other Iberian Para-Romani Varieties’, in Romani in Contact: The History, Structure and Sociology of a Language, ed. Yaron Matras (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1995), 125–50, and Yaron Matras, ‘Para-Romani Revisited’, in The Romani Element in Non-Standard Speech, ed. Yaron Matras (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 1–27.

¹²George Borrow, The Zincali, an Account of the Gypsies of Spain (London: J. Murray, 1841).

¹³Enrique Trujillo, Vocabulario de la lengua gitana (Madrid: Impr. de E. Trujillo, 1844); see Adiego, ‘The First Caló Dictionary Ever Published in Spain’. Other wordlists and dictionaries, of varying worth, are A.R.S.A., ‘A Spanish Gypsy Vocabulary’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1 (1888), 177–78; Richard Bright, Travels from Vienna through Lower Hungary (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1818); R. Campuzano, Orijen, usos y costumbres de los Jitanos y diccionario de su dialecto (Madrid: Imprenta de M. R. y Fonseca, 1848); Josef Antonio Conde, Lengua ethigitana, ó de gitanos, in Margarita Torrione, ‘Del dialecto Caló y sus usuarios. La minoría gitana de España. Materiales para una identidad. ss. XVIII y XIX’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univ. de Perpignan, 1988); D. A. de C., Diccionario del dialecto gitano (Barcelona: Imp. Hispana, 1851); Barsalay Dávila and Blas Pérez, Apuntes del dialecto caló o gitano puro (Madrid: Diana, 1943); D. A. Jiménez, Vocabulario del dialecto jitano (Sevilla: Imprenta de José María Gutiérrez de Alba, 1846); Pablo Moreno Castro and J. C. Reyes, Diccionario gitano (Barcelona: Gráficas Catena, 1981); F. M. Pabanó, Historia y costumbres de los gitanos (Diccionario español-gitano-germanesco) (Barcelona: Montaner y Simón, 1915); Francisco Sales de Mayo, El gitanismo. Historia, costumbres y dialectos de los gitanos, con un epítome de gramática gitana. Primer estudio filológico publicada hasta el dia y un diccionario caló-castellano por D. Francisco Quindalé, 9^th ed. (Madrid: Librería de Victoriano Suárez, 1870); J. Tineo Rebolledo, Diccionario gitano-español y español-gitano (Barcelona: Casa Editorial Maucci, 1909).

¹⁴Torrione, Diccionario caló-castellano de don Luis Usoz y Río, 26–27.

¹⁵See Siegmund A. Wolf, Grosses Wörterbuch der Zigeunersprache, 2^nd ed. (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1987); comparable material, with variant orthography, in Norbert Boretzky and Birgit Igla, Wörterbuch Romani-Deutsch-Englisch für den südosteuropäischen Raum: mit einer Grammatik der Dialektvarianten (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994).

¹⁶Analytical discussion and exemplification of para-Romani encryption practices in Carlos Clavería, Estudios sobre los gitanismos del español (Madrid: Revista de Filología Española, 1951); Adolfo Coelho, Os ciganos de Portugal: com un estudio sobre o calo (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1892); and Matras, ‘Para-Romani Revisited’.

¹⁷Coelho, Os ciganos de Portugal, 117.

¹⁸Studies of the words majo, chulo, guapo and flamenco in William Sayers, ‘Swagger and Sashay: An Etymology for Spanish majo/maja’, Romance Notes, 44 (2004), 293–98, and ‘Spanish flamenco: Origin, Loan Translation, and In- and Out-group Evolution (Romani, Caló, Castilian)’, Romance Notes, 48 (2007), 13–22; William Sayers, ‘Mexican mano and vato: Romani and Caló Origins’, Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, 3 (2008), 94–103.

¹⁹Borrow included examples of ‘Gypsy’ poetry in The Zincali but recognized the spurious nature of the vocabulary and composition. Germanía attracted the same kind of none-too-informed interest as Caló. See, for example, Juan Hidalgo, Vocabulario de germanía, in Orígenes de la lengua española (Madrid. V. Suárez, 1873). Modern scholarship has displayed less interest in Iberian underclass speech.

²⁰Studies from the last decade include: Mary Ellen Garcia, ‘Influence of Gypsy Caló on Contemporary Spanish Slang’, Hispania (USA), 88:4 (2005), 800–12; Brigitte Martín-Ayala, ‘Presencia del caló en el argot español’, Cuadernos Cervantes de la Lengua Española, 5 (1999), 45–47; D. Letticia Galindo, ‘Caló and Taboo Language Use among Chicanas: A Description of Linguistic Appropriation and Innovation’, in Speaking Chicana: Voice, Power, and Identity, ed. D. Letticia Galindo and María Dolores Gonzales (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1999), 175–93; Teresa Fernández Ulloa, ‘Argot y caló en El triunfo de Francisco Casavella’, ALPHA: Revista de Artes, Letras y Filosofia, 11 (1995), 97–132; Jacob L. Ornstein-Galicia, ‘Totacho a Todo Dar: Communicative Functions of Chicano Caló along the US:Mexico Border’, La Linguistique, 31 (1995), 117–29.

²¹Carlos Fuentes, Gringo viejo (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1985), 13.

²²With some quite limited geographical exceptions, gringo is not used of other speakers of Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America. Coincidentally, pilgrim was used on the other side of the border of recent arrivals in the American West, a usage traced to Mormon settlers’ self-styling as pilgrims; see Dictionary of American Regional English, ed. Frederic G. Cassidy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 1985– ), IV, 150, s.v. pilgrim.