Etymology of the Word YONI. Where Does This Term Come From?

In short, the term "yoni" means the United States of America (USA) and is used in Ecuador. How did the term originate? Well, I invite you to read this article.

When I was a kid, the phrase "I'm going to live in YONI" became worn out from overuse. And it's that a large part of Ecuador's population migrated to the United States and so, just like that, only those of us who stayed behind were left, those of us who did NOT go live in YONI… well, that's not entirely true in my case, but that's another story.

The thing is that as a kid I never really stopped to think about why we called the northern country that. I suppose you start by accepting new words without questioning them and then you gradually savor and understand them better… and that's when I realized it was a very much our own idiom—Ecuadorian, I mean.

The little word was so widely used that in the 80s there was a National Lottery commercial on TV, where some guy went to live in YONI and after a few years came back all slicked out and speaking Spanglish… looking down on his relatives because now he was a "resident." Later I also read the term in the late Fernando Artieda's poetry collection, in that verse about the death and wake of Julio Jaramillo that says:

Monica came all the way from YONI,
to tell him after he was dead,
how much she had loved him

In short, the word was injected intravenously into the vocabulary of the population, across all strata… stratospherically.

Then some time passed and the crazy idea got into my head to make a "guayaco" dictionary and compile colloquial terms and phrases from Guayaquil and Ecuador in general. In the meaning of each word I tried to include its etymology, elaborating as far as my limited amateur linguistics knowledge allowed. In those endeavors I came across the little word YONI again… and I reached the bold conclusion that it's a phonetic mutation into Spanish of the word United, pronounced yunaited, then yunai, then YONI.

The dictionary had some popularity and even the famous Vistazo magazine referenced it once.

One day, talking with my good friend Antonio Iñiguez—a visionary, great collaborator on the dictionary and expert taster of local seafood—it occurred to me to tell him my bold etymological conclusion, when he began shaking his head in disapproval and told me "no no no, you're wrong, the word YONI doesn't come from there".

He said, quite convinced, that the word YONI came from that acronym that means I LOVE NY, where the word LOVE is represented by a heart. The legend had been told to him by his good friend Octavio, who was no longer around to consult because, like many, he too had gone to YONI.

And in a way, just by looking at this little sign, which floods the souvenir shops of New York City, it seems to read the famous word YONI. We must also remember that the majority of Ecuadorian migrants are in this city.

Up to this point, both theories made sense and I began discussing the topic with my friends at Sunday morning gatherings, where we congregated to eat encebollado and talk about anything. At one of them someone said "I have a third theory… YONI comes from Jhonny". According to the new theory, Jhonny is a very common name in the United States and people began to call it the land of the Jhonnys, the land of the YONIs, YONI.

That's how I ended up with 3 different possible origins of this term, which continues to be commonly used and is now part of our vocabulary.

Does anyone have a fourth hypothesis?