With Societal Shift, a Frequently Asked Question: Latino or Not?

Aisha Al-Muslim, Richard Raymond and me, James Wagner.

Though our names aren’t, we are all Latino.

We all speak Spanish and know our Hispanic traditions, but our surnames often tell strangers a different story. As Latinos have become the country’s largest minority and have assimilated into the fabric of the United States, they have married people of other ethnic backgrounds, leading to a broad array of not necessarily Latino-sounding names.

For many of these Latinos, the lack of a Hispanic surname can cause awkward and comical social exchanges.

Among the most famous members of this subgroup are New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and the baseball player Mike Lowell, who have to explain their Hispanic backgrounds in interviews because of their Anglo names.

I, too, have had this experience. My mother is Nicaraguan and my father is of German descent but grew up in Dayton, Ohio. My father was in the Foreign Service, and I grew up all over the world. I have no accent, and most people think I’m just plain white and are surprised to discover my Latin roots when they get to know me.

When I wear T-shirts that say “Nicaragua,” people ask if I’ve been there for spring break, instead of seeing it as an homage to my heritage.

Because of her name, Aisha Al-Muslim, a senior at Lehman College in the Bronx in New York, encounters a different problem. She was named in honor of a friend of the family, but she is not a follower of Islam. She’s Catholic, and of Panamanian and Jamaican descent. She speaks Spanish fluently, and her favorite dish is gallo pinto, or rice and beans.

“Even though I’m a Latina, I still have to explain myself because of my name and how I look,” Al-Muslim said in a telephone interview. “I don’t get mad at it.”

Sociologists say that Hispanics like Al-Muslim and me, the products of assimilation and mixed marriages, will have to clarify our Latin identity at work or in social settings as our number grows and our visibility rises.

“Assimilation has a lot to do with names,” Tatcho Mindiola, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston, said in a telephone interview. “Names mean something,” he added. “They are not insignificant.”

Ethriam Cash Brammer, an author of children’s books who lives in Detroit, was born Ethriam Cash Grima but became a Brammer when his mother’s Anglo husband adopted him at age 5. Brammer, 36, who works as the assistant director of the Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies at Wayne State University, said in a telephone interview that he had benefited from his name.

“Just because my last name was Brammer, I was placed on the gifted list,” he said.

Brammer has two older brothers who kept the Grima name, he said, and were labeled as “slow learners” and put in special-ed classes. “I was in the gifted class in fourth grade in a community that was almost entirely white.”

But Brammer’s last name has also caused people to question his “Latino-ness,” he said.

“People identify me pretty readily as Mexican as soon as they see me,” Brammer said.

“But it’s a double-edged sword. … I get a lot of flak when people ask what an Anglo is doing as the assistant director of a Latino research center.”

For me, the reverse is true. People see a 6-foot-tall, 21-year-old man with light skin, dark hair and dark eyes, and are surprised when I speak to them in flawless Spanish.

On a national level, Richardson’s Latin background is not immediately obvious.

Richardson, who decided Thursday to end his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, is the son of a white American father and a Mexican mother.

For the early part of his life, he was raised in Mexico City, and he campaigned in Spanish and English. He has even joked about adopting his mother’s maiden name, Lopez, to appear more Latino to voters, according to the Associated Press.

For some, an Anglicized name isn’t given at birth, but taken on later in life. History and popular culture are filled with examples of Latinos who have changed their names through marriage or for professional reasons. The crooner Andy Russell changed his name from Andrés Rábago Pérez. The rocker Ritchie Valens changed his name from Richard Valenzuela.

“There is a long history of changing their names, if they could pass, to work in Hollywood,” said Cynthia Duarte, an assistant professor of sociology at Quinnipiac University.

“It was a racist industry,” Duarte added. “To be ethnic was not desirable.”

Today, some Latinos are trying to resist those pressures by embracing and reclaiming their ethnic names.

In Texas, Richard Raymond, a state senator who represents a largely Latino district, said he had reached a point in his life in which he thought it was appropriate to add another name. Last June, he legally changed his name to Richard Peña Raymond.

But Raymond, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview that he didn’t add Peña, his mother’s maiden name, as a political move for the coming election this year. He said he did it to honor his mother.

“Many times I’d be at something, and my mother would be there, too,” Raymond, 47, said. “When they would say my name, she would say, ‘He’s a Peña too.’ ”

Luis Ernie Barnett, a Mexican-American advertising salesman with Arizona Newspapers, says his surname has English and French roots and is common in the Nogales area. And though he is not considering a change, he says he has recently noticed some friends reclaiming their Latin surnames, possibly in response to anti-immigrant sentiment.

“I think people are starting to take a stand,” said Barnett, 23, who was born in San Jose, Calif. “People are starting to become more proud and expressive about their heritage.”