What Burrito means
Burrito is a Mexican antojito name of Spanish origin meaning "little donkey". It is built from Spanish burro (donkey) and -ito (diminutive). It is pronounced boo-REE-toh, and it is most associated with northern Mexico.
Little donkey is what the word means, but the link to the food is a modern guess: the bedroll-on-a-burro image and the taquero-nicknamed-El-Burrito story both surface only in twentieth-century retellings.
This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: Antojito means "little craving". These are the masa-based street foods named for their shape more often than their filling: a sope is a small mound, a huarache is a sandal, a gordita is a fat little one, a tlacoyo is an oval patty.
