Some years ago I noticed that the term chicanos became common for Mexican Americans, Then after a while it became capitalised. I believe that some Mexican-Americans adopt it proudly and some find it offensive (apologies to anyone offended).
I have looked and looked and looked but can’t find any derivation. The —canos bit seems easy - Mexicanos, but I thought the first bit had to do with Chicago (well what do I know).
In a discount book shop I recently found a huge book about Mexican immigration into Emerica - no bloody answer. It’s driving me crazy because I see it all the time.
The dictionary can help with this. The Merriam-Webster dictionary ( www.m-w.com ) supports the etymology, provided, here, that chicano originated from a familiarized form of mexicano.
Yes I’ve seen all that before, what I’m interested in is the first syllable… I’d love to know where the chi… comes from because it makes no sense to me at all. As I said I’ve looked in various reference books but can’t find its derivation.
The “ch-” in many Northern Mexican (and Southwestern U.S.) dialects has more of an “sh” sound. So Chicano may sound somehat like “shicano”, and is at times rendered as “Xicano”.
The “x” in Spanish has covered several sounds over the centuries, but was used in Mexico to represent various sh-like sounds used in native languages. So “Mexica” (the ethnonym used by “Aztecs” in their Nahuatl language) sounds more like “Meshika”.
Here’s where it becomes more anecdotal. In the 19th century, it is believed that the term “Xicano” or “Chicano” was used by the more or less Spanish descended Hispanos of areas like Santa Fé to describe later Mexican arrivals from central Mexico, who were more Native American and often Nahuatl speakers. It was a somewhat disparaging term, but was taken up by many of the Mexican-Americans as a term for themselves.
…also, while I haven’t seen this elsewhere, I have often wondered whether the term “chichimeca” (another originally pejorative Nahuatl term for the different Northern Uto-Aztecan tribes which spawned the Aztecs) had some influence on the word.