With a strong accent: Hispanics reclaim the heritage of their last names

"Adding the accent in my last name represents to me all the progress we Hispanics have made in the United States and it makes me proud."

Se habla español, mes hispano — Jeremy Brooks

Published by

Verónica Silveri Pazos

15 de septiembre, 2022

Topics:

Hispanic heritage

Many Hispanics in the United States have had to change the way they spell and pronounce their names due to technology or the need to integrate into a society where English is the predominant language. Some left behind the accent marks (á), virgules (ñ), umlauts (ü) and cedillas (ç), which do not exist in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet.

These diacritics are of the utmost importance in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, as they indicate how certain words are pronounced and help to differentiate homonyms: words that are spelled and pronounced the same.

Axios explains in a recent article the motives and struggles of new generations of Hispanics to reclaim part of their culture and demand correct spelling.

"Adapting to American culture"

During the Mexican Revolution, the 1910s saw one of the first major waves of Hispanic migration to the United States. The descendants of these immigrants, now fourth or fifth generation, almost never use accent marks in their names and surnames. One of the main reasons is that at that time teachers and parents did not teach them Spanish correctly or preferred to avoid it in order to better adapt to the culture of their new country.

Cynthia Duarte, director of the Sarah W. Heath Center for Equality and Justice at California Lutheran University, explained to Axios some of the reasons why the first Hispanics to arrive in the country abandoned the use of Spanish:

U.S. schools punished students and bullied parents for speaking Spanish. Hispanics also faced segregation, discrimination and high dropout rates, so the idea of learning where to put accents in names was not necessarily high on the priority list.... That resulted in the loss of the language and the use of accents became a sign of embarrassment.

"Technological failures"

Testimonials quoted by Axios pointed to "technological barriers" as a reason why people with Spanish names do not use accent marks: they say it is difficult to find it on a computer keyboard and some admit to never having used it.

Typewriters and later computer keyboards only used their inventors' English alphabet. The history of technology reveals that early computer programmers did not consider non-English letters and characters when developing keyboards and computer systems.

Journalist Scott Rosenberg points out that early programmers failed to incorporate accents into their systems because they were working on machines with very limited memory that did not even include the function of writing in lowercase letters. So, for many decades, it wasn't possible to include accents in digital communication.

News agencies also did not include accents and other characters for a long time, because their computer systems did not recognize them either.

A movement in computer science called internationalization - nicknamed i18n - made it possible to use multiple languages on computers. This allowed publishing platforms and social networks to now display spelling characters on their keyboards beyond those of the English language. However, by the time this system was implemented, many users had already gotten into the habit of not using these accent marks.

Claiming the accent mark

Today, many Hispanics are embracing accent marks and graphic symbols of the language as a symbol of cultural pride. Major figures and media outlets have endorsed the use of correct spelling:

-Major League Baseball (MLB) Hispanic ballplayers started a campaign in 2016 called #PonleAcento to get their names printed correctly on their jerseys with tildes.

- In April 2019, The Associated Press news agency issued guidance indicating that accents should be used in their publications if interviewees request it or are known to accent their names.

- Chris Echeverría, Assistant Director of Government Affairs at New York University told Axios that his grandfather changed his last name to a "less Hispanic" one in the 1970s because he felt discriminated against, but today, he uses it with pride:

Adding the accent to my last name represents to me all the progress we Hispanics in the United States have made and makes me proud. Working from home since the pandemic and being closer to family and friends has reconnected me to my Hispanic roots, so I have used my last name accent on social media.