Everything south of the United States except for the French/Dutch settled area of South America is referred to as 'Latin America'

LOL, but why aren't french-speakers from Quebec called "latinos" also? It makes no sense.

Language and nomenclature does not develop rationally. It's fair to point out that you find it jarring, but it's so embedded in the western hemisphere that your appeals to sense aren't going to change anything.

> It's fair to point out that you find it jarring, but it's so embedded in the western hemisphere that your appeals to sense aren't going to change anything.

I am in the "western hemisphere" (by any possible definition), and this nomenclature is not by any means embedded in my culture. In high school, we learned latin as the language of our ancestors, we studied latin civilization and latin culture as part of the ancient Roman empire, etc. I remember being taught about our latin culture of southern europe of romance-speaking peoples, and they compared with the germanic culture of the north. At home, my father pushed into me the (of course, ridiculous) stereotypes of the serious, hard-working germanic peoples of the north, which are probably more intelligent but they have less creativity than us latins. I can call myself a "proud latin".

It does not seem that this usage of "latin" that you mention is particular to the western hemisphere, but rather to the U.S.. Moreover, the term "latin america" was precisely introduced to refer to the french-speaking colonizers of the continent.

Until recently, it was "so embedded" in the anglophone (and all Latin languages) to use the male gender when unspecified (AND plurals in Latin languages), and yet enough people appeals to sense did make a difference.

Why is it cool to change the language about gender, but not about culture?

An American would refer to them as Canadian, French-Canadian, or Québécois if you're feeling fancy.

We also have the term Hispanic to refer to folks from Latin America though I'm not quite sure what the underlying difference is.

Hispanic means "of Spain," it refers to the people/cultures that have their roots in the cultural influence/imperialism of Spain.

Latino/Latina means "of Latin America" (actually I think it's an abbreviation of the Spanish or Portuguese translation of "Latin American") and refers to people whose ancestors are from Latin America.

So an American whose ancestors came from Spain would be Hispanic but not Latina and an American whose ancestors came from Brazil would be Latina but not Hispanic. Someone whose ancestors came from Mexico would be both Hispanic and Latina.

Like most broad, potentially emotionally charged, cultural labels many people don't agree with this labeling and/or may self identify differently. Especially those who don't have a strong cultural or linguistical ties to where their ancestors are from.

Hispanic is 'from Spain', so Spanish, Cuban, Puerto Rico...however it's often used interchangeably with Latino.

There's also Chicano which means from Mexico.

> We also have the term Hispanic to refer to folks from Latin America

Not quite. Brazil is in Latin America, but Brazilians are not Hispanic.

Thank you for the correction! I had always thought Hispanic / Latino / Latina were interchangeable. This whole time I thought the Latin* descriptors just meant something along the lines of "native Spanish speaker of the Western Hemisphere."

As a side note, most of Spain itself is in the Western Hemisphere.

Hispanic refers to Spanish-influenced cultures, not all of South America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_America

I think that's why it's largely considered Latin America instead of Hispanic America.

And indeed that in my opinion is an issue.

People in Quebec are french-speaking or francophone, but calling them "French" is dismissing everybody in Quebec who is not of "pure" French descent.

That's a very good point, though I always took "French-Canadian" to mean "French-Speaking Canadian" instead of specifying origin and location, similar to how we have the term "African-American" which is a euphemism for skin-color as opposed to specifying origin and location.

I wonder what the argument of the people who downvoted you would be?

Saying "LOL... it makes no sense" about the label self-applied by people in a culture you aren't familiar with doesn't add anything to the conversation, and it comes across as rude and dismissive. You don't need to type everything that comes into your head into Hacker News.

We are not talking about self-applied labels, since parent explicitly says "are referred to as".

So I think it is a very valid point to wonder why some regions came to be referred to (in american english) as latin america, where others that would in principle fit the logical criteria didn't.

I agree it could be put in a more constructive way, but yourself assuming they are not familiar with a particular culture just because you don't like their comment is what actually comes across as rude and dismissive to me.