Last fall, I was watching the Ohio State-Iowa football game when college football announcer Brad Nessler used the word “Latine” coming out of a commercial break. The occasion was an acknowledgement of Hispanic Heritage Month; because I’d never heard the term while watching a game of any sort, I took to X and Threads to express surprise about what was, to me, a watershed moment. (A search of these sites reveals that only one other person seems to have opined on this issue, so perhaps “watershed” is a strong term.) That one other person, an X user, wasn’t as impressed. ”Did Brad Nessler say ‘Latine‘ on TV? No such thing.” This person had been irked by Nessler’s use of the term during the USC-Michigan game, two weeks earlier.  

I first discovered the term “Latine” about four years ago quite by accident. I came across a (then) Twitter discussion in my feed, led mostly by a self-described Latina, on the growth of “Latinx.” She was very frustrated by the relatively new term’s popularity and viewed it as a figurative “colonization,” by non-Hispanic people, of a concept the Spanish language already had a model for in the word “gente” (people).  

Since then, use of “Latine” has grown exponentially, though “Latinx” remains far more familiar to most people. A September 2024 Associated Press article cites a Pew Research poll in which 47 percent of Latinos had heard of “Latinx”—only 18 percent had heard of “Latine.” However, the article continues, 75 percent of U.S. Latinos surveyed say neither term should not be used to describe [them.]” (It’s no surprise, then, that the Associated Press still uses “Latino” or “Hispanic” to refer people “with roots in Latin America and Spain.) 

The disdain for “Latinx” among Hispanics can even have consequences for our politics, according to Harvard professor Marcel Roman. Just a week before our recent election, Roman released a paper which concluded that use of “Latinx” in messaging decreases support for Democratic politicians. Marcel stated that ”Latinos who oppose the use of ‘Latinx’ to describe their community are less likely to support and vote for [Democrats]. And, overall, Latino voters are less likely to support Democrats who use ‘Latinx’ as opposed to ‘Latino’ in their political messaging, even when those messages are otherwise identical.” Even more specifically, Roman concluded that people who had negative sentiment toward LGBTQ+ issues and lived in places where “Latinx” was more likely to be searched in Google were most likely to switch their vote from the Democrat (Hillary Clinton) to Donald Trump in 2020. 

In an environment of evolving sensibilities around these terms, it is probably best for entities such as PR companies or government contractors to avoid hard and fast rules about which is most preferable. However, because of its roots in Spanish, I expect to see “Latine” continue to gain popularity. Perhaps it will become a “compromise” term for expressing gender-neutral or group identity among those who currently insist on “Latino” or “Latinx.”