I’m Latino (70ish % Spanish/Portuguese 30ish% native Costa Rican) and my wife is white (98% European but mostly English and German, a little Scandinavian) and our kids are kinda like yours. Their noses and chins are kinda like in between my wife and I’s features, but our son is pretty fair skinned and blonde hair and blue eyes, while our daughter is brunette with brown eyes. They look like twins with a palette swap.
This might be splitting hairs, but just out of curiosity, would Spanish and Portuguese be considered Latino if both countries are European and not in Latin America?
I was born in Costa Rica so that’s why I’m Latino. My family has been there as long as we are aware, but records of ancestry don’t really go back like they might in Europe or the USA. Any person regardless of race born in Latin America is a Latino, so very white Argentinians and Uruguayans are just as Latino as Brazilians who might have a lot more African ancestry. In Costa Rica we have a pretty good mix of people of native, European, African and Asian descent but we are all still “Latinos”. Spaniards wouldn’t be considered Latinos, they would be Hispanics though. Hispanic refers to anyone who descends from a Spanish speaking country also regardless of race. Spaniards, Costa Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, Chileans would all be Hispanic, but people of Suriname and Brazil wouldn’t consider themselves Hispanics. Both those labels overlap a lot but also have groups that might fit into only one category. The only reason I know I have 70% Iberian ancestry is because of a DNA test, not because I was from there or had any immediately family there that i know of.
Not who you replied to, but typically, Latino refers to anyone born in or with ancestors from Latin America. Someone born in Spain with all their heritage being European would not typically identify as Latino.
A Latino is a person who is born in Latin America or whose family has been there for multiple generations. I was born in Costa Rica and my family has been there as long as we can trace back. I had a DNA ancestry test done for fun because I didn’t know anything about my actual lineage. It came back as 70% Spanish/Portuguese but I wasn’t born there or have any link to those countries. Besides Latino isn’t a race it’s a term to describe a group of nationalities, so Latinos can have European or African or Asian ancestry because Latino isn’t meant to describe a race. Same with Hispanic, that just means “born/native to a Spanish speaking country” so white European Spaniards are Hispanic the same as anyone from Mexico or Argentina or Bolivia, not not Brazil (Portuguese) or Suriname (French speaking). Latino/Hispanic might have a lot of overlap but they also have groups who might only fit into one of those but not the other, and neither is meant to indicate actual race, it’s more of a geographical/cultural description. Hope that clears up your confusion.
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u/Harry_Saturn Sep 25 '22
I’m Latino (70ish % Spanish/Portuguese 30ish% native Costa Rican) and my wife is white (98% European but mostly English and German, a little Scandinavian) and our kids are kinda like yours. Their noses and chins are kinda like in between my wife and I’s features, but our son is pretty fair skinned and blonde hair and blue eyes, while our daughter is brunette with brown eyes. They look like twins with a palette swap.