Tocayo/a, Cuate, and Cuatito/a

David from Black Mountain, North Carolina, is fond of the Spanish term that originally meant “someone who shares the same name as another person” (which is one of the meanings of “namesake” in English) and has expanded to mean “someone with whom you have an emotional kinship or fellow-feeling”: tocayo or tocaya. A word with a similar meaning in parts of Latin America is cuate, which originally meant “a fraternal twin.” Along with its more familiar forms cuatito and cuatita, cuate has expanded to connote a kind of “spiritual twin.” This is part of a complete episode.