The two words are often used interchangeably, but they're not the same thing.

The difference lies in the words themselves.

Latino refers to geography, people who were from or descendants of Latin America.

That's this area here on the globe.

It includes most countries in Central and South America, as well as some in the Caribbean, 20 countries total and some territories like Puerto Rico.

The term Latin America was first used by Chilean politician, Francisco Bilbao, in 1856.

It was used to describe countries in America whose predominant languages stem from Latin.

So, like Spanish, Portuguese, French.

That's why Belize in Central America and Guyana and Suriname in South America are not part of Latin America.

English is the official language of Belize and Guyana; Dutch and Sranan Tongo are spoken in Suriname.

We've recently adopted Latinx as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina.

In the most literal sense, Hispanic also refers to language. People were from or descendants of Spanish-speaking countries that includes places like Spain in Europe and some countries and territories in the Caribbean.

It excludes countries like Brazil and others in Latin America, where the predominantly language isn't Spanish.

According to the Cervantes Institute, more than 400 million people worldwide are from Spanish speaking countries, and nearly 10% of those reside in the United States.

That's a lot.

And that's probably why the US government introduced the term in the 1970 Census during Richard Nixon's presidency.

So back to the beginning. The two terms shouldn't be used interchangeably because they're not the same thing.

You can be Hispanic if you are from Spain, but that doesn't make you Latinx because you're not from the Latin American country.

You are Latinx if you are from Brazil.

But you're not Hispanic. But you can be both.

I'm both.

My family is from Mexico, both the Latin and Hispanic country.

Now you know!