From Sangilero to Sangilano and Sangilense. A letter to the Academy of Language clarifying the crafty intention. Casuistical gentile. Costume and phonetics in our name given to the people of our region.

In relation with the name given to the people of San Gil, I must add to these pages a note directed to Roberto Restrepo, a notable physician and writer, who had then prepared a book already published, entitled, Gentilicios Colombianos . He had given successive interviews to a newspaper (27) of Bogot. In one of them, the name given to the people of San Gil was totally erroneous which prompted the following letter: “Mister Doctor Don Roberto Restrepo, Academy of Language, Bogot, Distinguished doctor and friend: I want to avail of the circumstance which you have given to the public opinion through the columns of the prestigious newspaper, El Siglo, since the initiation of the interesting column of publication of the names given to the people of different regions of Colombia, to formulate an interesting and respectful remark about the name of the natives from the most illustrious city of San Gil. Your work has been great, Doctor Restrepo, because it is the first serious authoritative and complete topic of such transcendency in the Colombian lexicon. In the edition of Thursday the eleventh of this month, the names corresponding to the letter S, for San Gil, I found strange, Sangilero. I had faith that the denominative Sangilero was a ‘lapsus calami’ of typographical error. I perceive by intuition, because of the importance of the publication, that a careful correction of the sheet of copy was done.
You have naturally paid attention to the cautious elaboration or indication of the numerous names published, all the proper factors, costumes, which are, without doubt, a sort of regulatory law, if you could say so, in a speculative subject as language another important law is phonetics.
In reference to the case of San Gil, custom and phonetics do not t the name Sangilero. The denomination, Sangilentilde, has been given to the natives and adoptive of San Gil, among us, from remote times, by pure antonomasia. Would it sound wrong to say Sangilero, Sangiluno or Sangilano? No, if the Santandereanos and the natives of San Gil’s ears had not been accustomed to name the ones born in ‘The Pearl of Fonce’ Sangilentildes. In the list of names given to light, you have given them indistinctively the endings ero, ano, uno, es, ense etc. which indicate, clearly, that the factors of costume and phonetics prevail over any general rule. It just happened that in the town of Socorro, the name was Socorrentilde. As such, history relates the Socorrentildea Manuela Beltrn. But at the end of the century before the last, the people of Socorro chose to call themselves “Socorranos”(masculine) and “Socorranas”(feminine). Instead, peoples from Zapatoca just added a simple ‘s’ to their names, without being the rule. Neither is ‘Bumangues’ (from Bucaramanga). From these it can be deduced that there is no syntaxic or logic norm. You well know that the people is king giving its verdict to academicians. These names are very capricious the people from Santander in Spain are Santanderinos, the ones from Santander in Colombia Santandereanos, the ones from the peninsular San Gil Sangileses, and the ones from here, not as you suggest, but as the ones who had the privilege to be born in San Gil. Sangilentildes called themselves, with great pride, the pleiades of sons of San Gil who you know, your servant and friend”. This letter was published (28), also, Doctor Restrepo’s letter which is long and I abstained to copy, but it states that if the error had not been observed by me, it would have slipped in the book prepared by the Academy. He also asked me for the names used by several towns of Santander, which were published in the same newspaper. Doctor Restrepo’s letter dated September 24, was published on October 7, 1952 in the above mentioned Bumangues newspaper.