I haven't looked into the history personally, but heard once that the original term used (by outsiders, of course) was "Latin". But because it doesn't fit well

I haven't looked into the history personally, but heard once that the original term used (by outsiders, of course) was "Latin". But because it doesn't fit well into the gendered Spanish language, it was disliked by native speakers, who went on to organically derive Latino/Latina as replacements. If true, that makes the English-speaking movement to replace Latino/Latina with Latinx doubly ridiculous.