Filipinos — Latinos or Chinos?

Dear Mexican,

How do Mexicans get such ridiculous nicknames from seemingly normal names? For instance, José becomesChepe, Eduardo isLalo, Gabriel becomesGabi and Guillermo devolves intoMemo.

It's Marcela, Not Chela

Dear Wabette,

The definitive study on this quirk remains Viola Waterhouse's "Mexican Spanish Nicknames," included in the 1981 anthology Linguistics across Continents: Studies in Honor of Richard S. Pittman. Unfortunately, the ethnolinguist devotes most of her article to including as many seemingly wacky Mexican apodos as possible (some of the better ones mentioned are Goyo for Gregorio, Licha for Alicia, Nacho for Ignacio, and Cuco for Refugio) instead of theorizing why Mexican Spanish is prone to such a mangled morphology. Waterhouse does identify one phenomenon that factors into many of these name changes: palatalization, when speakers pronounce non-palatal consonants as palatals -- for example, the transformation of sinto a chsound when Salvador becomes Chava. Other phonetical laws not mentioned by Waterhouse that influence Mexican Spanish nicknames include apocopation (the dropping of a word's last letters or syllables -- Caro for Carolina), apheresis (when a word loses syllables or letters at its beginning -- Mando for Armando) and syncopation, when a word contracts by shedding sounds -- that's how Roberto becomes Beto.

But the question remains: Why the dropping of sounds and letters in Mexican Spanish nicknames? This Mexican's take: Most nicknames derived from proper nombres are shortened versions of the original. Mexicans advance this process by employing the above-mentioned tricks. Such trends occur in languages that are evolving into newer, bolder tongues. So enjoy your pussy Billys from William and Cathysfrom Catherine, gabachos: Mexicans will take the linguistic wonder that is creating Lencho from Lorenzo any day.

Dear Mexican,

Do Mexicans see us Filipinos aschinos or as hybrid Latinos? After all, we have Spanish surnames, we're brown and Catholic, we have quinceañeras (just several years after your chicas) and we started that grape strike Mexicans get credit for.

Fabulous Little Island Person

Dear FLIP,

Gracias for allowing the Mexican to set the historical record straight. American history classes teach kiddies that César Chávez and his United Farm Workers brought justice to farmworkers through boycotts and strikes in California's Central Valley during the 1960s. What the history books rarely mention is that Chávez and his Mexican followers first earned national prominence by joining an already existing grape huelga started by Filipino laborers. And what the history books never mention is that many of those pioneer Filipinos joined the UFW but eventually left due to perceived discrimination at the hands of the union's Mexican-majority leadership and members. One of those Filipinos, former UFW vice-president Philip Vera Cruz, described in his 1992 memoir how the union became "very ethnocentric. When [UFW Mexican members] called out "Viva la Raza" or "Viva César Chávez," they didn't realize that all these "Vivas" did not include the Filipinos." On that note, FLIP: Yep, Filipinos are nothing more to Mexicans than chinos with tans.