Mexican X-plainer: Tocayo

In Spanish, when someone has the same name as you, they’re your “tocayo” or “tocaya.”

I grew up bilingual in a Mexican American family. I’ve loved the word since childhood, wondering why there was no easy English equivalent. There’s such a warmth to “tocayo,” an undercurrent of sudden and organic solidarity. We don’t know each other, perhaps, but we’re part of this accidental community of folks with the same name.

Later, I minored in Spanish (both for my BA and MA). The consensus among my professors as to its origin was the same.

Latin.

In Roman marriages, a bride would say a phrase: “Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia” (“where you are Gaius, I’m Gaia,” i.e., we now share a name). The groom would repeat the phrase, inverted: “Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaius.”

That “tu Gaius,” professors assured me, evolved into “tucayu” and then “tocayo.”

But they were mistaken.

The word is Nahuatl.

In Classical Nahuatl, the word for “name” (and reputation) is “tōcāitl,” pronounced “toh KAH itl,” with the first and second vowels held longer than the last.

In its possessed form, it drops that last syllable:

notōcā — my name
motōcā — your name
ītōcā — his/her/its name
totōcā — our name
īntōcā — their name