‘Latinx’ is Only Used by 4% of Latinxs in U.S. According to PEW Study

For decades now, the Latinx community has yet to come to a consensus about what to call ourselves, and the debates and discourse among us have only risen. In 2021, a poll found that 40 percent of Latinx voters were offended by the term “Latinx.” Notably, these voters were older and politically conservative. Three years later, the debate has shown no signs of shifting in a positive direction. A study from the Pew Research Center found that awareness of the “Latinx” term has risen in the U.S. by 47 percent, compared to 23 percent in 2019. This was largely thanks to it being used by those on the political stage, academia, and the entertainment industry. Yet, the study also found that not only about half of the Latinx population had never heard of “Latinx,” but also only 4 percent of Latinx adults in the U.S. had used it to identify themselves – increasing only 1 percent from 2019. It goes to show how awareness has had little impact on its actual usage in the community, bringing up questions for those outside the community about what term to use when referring to Latinx people in the U.S. and abroad.

“Latinx” has been used since 2004 as a gender-neutral alternative to “Latino” and Latino.” Its initial use was to reject the gendered nature of Spanish that applies male and female suffixes to most words, with the exception of some words that end in the gender-neutral -e suffix. While “Latine” has also been used in more recent years, especially among Spanish speakers, as yet another alternative, the -x suffix is considered an homage to Nahuatl, the most spoken Indigenous language and the second most spoken language overall in Mexico after Spanish and Yucatec Maya. However, “Latinx” didn’t gain traction until 2016 when there was more awareness of trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid identities in the U.S.

In the years since, however, there have been many moves to eradicate “Latinx” from the cultural lexicon completely. In 2021, a Latino civil rights organization stopped using “Latinx” and the governor of Arkansas even banned the use of the word in government documents in 2023 in favor of the pan-ethnic terms “Hispanic,” which has been used in the U.S. since the ’70s and “Latino,” which has been used since the ’90s. These two terms share many overlapping similarities but they are not identical. Whereas “Hispanic” refers to any person of Spanish origin, “Latinx” refers to any person of Latin American origin including Brazilians. That said, it’s worth noting that neither of these terms are popular in Latin America, as those in Latin America and the Caribbean refer to themselves by their nationality (e.g. Dominican, Peruvian, Guatemalan etc).

Also in the Pew Study, it was found that 75 percent of Latinxs said “Latinx” should be used to describe people from the community, 36 percent said that it was a “bad thing” for the term to be used, and 81 percent said they use “Hispanic” or “Latino” to describe themselves. “Latine,” another alternative word, has even less public awareness than “Latinx,” with 79 percent saying they have not heard of the term. Based on the demographics of the survey takers, it appeared that younger Latinxs had more awareness of these gender-neutral terms, which decreased with age.

While the terms we use to identify ourselves are both personal and ever-evolving, this study is a clear indicator that age is a major factor into how we chose to identify. As a community that is about 60 million strong in the U.S., these patterns indicate that a consensus is not likely but over time that could change as younger generations popularize terms.