The term appeared online in the early 2000s and spread through queer and feminist spaces in the 2010s. It was created to include nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people in a language where most nouns are masculine or feminine. Universities and nonprofits adopted it widely around 2016.
It has never been widely used by the community it names. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in December 2019 found that 23% of US Hispanic adults had heard the term and only 3% used it to describe themselves. Critics say the x is hard to pronounce in Spanish and was imposed by English-speaking institutions. In 2023, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders banned the term in state documents.
The debate is about who gets to name a group. Some people who use Latinx value its inclusion of trans and nonbinary people. Others prefer Latino, Hispanic, Latine or their national origin, such as Mexican American or Puerto Rican. ARD's approach is to follow how people describe themselves and to be specific when possible.