High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Pinoy is an informal demonym referring to the Filipino people in the Philippines and overseas Filipinos around the world. Filipinos usually refer to themselves as Pinoy or sometimes the feminine Pinay. The word is formed by taking the last four letters of Filipino and adding the diminutive suffix -y in the Tagalog language (the suffix is commonly used in Filipino nicknames: "Ninoy" or "Noynoy" for Benigno, "Totoy" for Augusto, etc.). Pinoy was used for self-identification by the first wave of Filipinos going to the continental United States before World War II and has been used both in a pejorative sense as well as a term of endearment similar to Chicano. Both Pinoy and Pinay are still regarded as derogatory by some Filipinos though they are widely used and gaining mainstream usage.