Why Is It Called Mexican Train Dominoes? The Real History

Why Is It Called Mexican Train Dominoes?

According to the most widely repeated account, Americans attached the name to a train-building domino game they saw played enthusiastically by Cuban, Mexican, and other Latin American laborers — the name stuck to the game the way names do, casually and without paperwork. Here is the irony that makes the question worth asking: in Mexico and Cuba, the closest traditional version of the game is called Dominó Cubano — “Cuban dominoes” — so the game the name points at is not particularly Mexican at all.

That answer comes with a caveat you will not find on most pages about this game: the naming story is folklore, not documented history. Nobody wrote it down at the time; it is the account that gets passed along. What is documented is more recent, more American, and more corporate than the romance of the name suggests — and I think the honest version of the story is actually the more interesting one.

What Is Actually Documented

The paper trail for Mexican Train as we know it begins in 1994. Roy and Katie Parsons copyrighted the modern rules in 1994, and Puremco — a domino manufacturer in Waco, Texas — marketed the game under the name Mexican Train, copyrighting its version of the rules in 2005. Puremco-branded Mexican Train products are sold today by University Games.

Everything distinctive about the boxed game dates from this era: the double-12 set of 91 tiles as the standard, the plastic station hub that holds the engine, the little train-shaped markers, the 13-round structure counting the engines down from the double-12 to the double-blank. The game took off in the United States in the mid-1990s, and boxed double-12 sets with a station and markers became the commercial standard.

Two things worth being precise about. First, the Parsons did not invent the idea of building domino trains — train-style domino games existed before 1994, and the traditional relatives below almost certainly fed into what they standardized. What they did was write down, organize, and copyright a specific ruleset that a manufacturer then put in a box with a memorable name. Second, because those rules are copyrighted (©1994 Roy & Katie Parsons, ©2005 Puremco), you will notice we never call any version “the official rules” — we describe the standard rules, the ones most groups share, which is all anyone outside that copyright can honestly offer. Our own rules reference works exactly that way.

The Folklore: From China to the Caribbean

Everything before 1994 should be read with “the story goes” in front of it — so here is the story as it is commonly told.

Dominoes themselves descend from Chinese tile games, and popular accounts trace the train-game branch of the family back to Chinese domino games such as pai gow. As the story goes, Chinese laborers brought domino games with them to Cuba and Latin America while working the sugar fields in the mid-to-late 1800s, where they blended into what became one of the world’s great domino cultures — dominoes remain a fixture of Caribbean and Latin American social life to this day. From that culture, the account continues, train-style domino games made their way into the United States, where the name “Mexican Train” was eventually attached by American players.

Why the hedging? Because the sources for this lineage are thin. The dates wobble depending on who is telling it, the chain of transmission is asserted rather than evidenced, and pagat.com — normally the most careful reference for tile and card games, and one that documents variants meticulously — offers no origin story for Mexican Train at all. When the most rigorous source in the field declines to tell the tale, that is a strong signal the tale is folklore-grade. It may well be broadly true; nobody can currently show that it is.

Longana: The Closest Traditional Relative

If you want the most credible bridge between Caribbean domino culture and the boxed American game, it is Longana — the game also known as Dominó Cubano. Longana is a Cuban and Latin American game for four players using a double-9 set, in which each player builds their own branch off the starting double. Personal lines radiating from a central double: that is the skeleton of Mexican Train, minus the 1990s packaging.

What the American standardization added on top of that skeleton is essentially everything you would buy in a box: the communal extra train that gives Mexican Train its name, the markers that open and close personal trains, the station hub, the double-12 set, and the fixed 13-round structure. Longana is the most commonly cited traditional ancestor — and the fact that its other name is “Cuban dominoes” is the neatest single piece of evidence that “Mexican Train” is an American label, not a statement of origin.

Why the Honest Version Matters

Most write-ups of this game’s history present the whole chain — pai gow, sugar fields, railroads, the name — as settled fact. It is not, and repeating it as fact does not make it so. What we can say plainly: the game as we know it was standardized in the United States in 1994 by Roy and Katie Parsons, marketed as Mexican Train by Puremco of Waco, Texas, and boomed from the mid-1990s onward. What came before is a plausible, appealing account that deserves the words “the story goes.”

Despite the name, then, Mexican Train is best understood as a 1990s American codification of a much older, probably Caribbean-flavored family of train games — a family whose most famous traditional member is named after Cuba. Games are like that: they travel, they blend, and the labels rarely keep up with the journey.

If reading about the game has you wanting to actually play it, you can play Mexican Train free in your browser — solo against AI bots or local pass-and-play with up to 4 players, no download or sign-up needed. And if you are curious how the game mutated once it spread across a few million American kitchen tables, the variations page catalogs what happened next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it called Mexican Train dominoes?

According to the most widely repeated account, Americans named it after seeing the train-building domino game played by Cuban, Mexican, and other Latin American laborers. The story is folklore rather than documented history — and in Mexico and Cuba, the closest traditional version is called Dominó Cubano, “Cuban dominoes.”

Is Mexican Train actually from Mexico?

Not as far as anyone can document. The modern game was standardized in the United States in 1994, and its most commonly cited traditional relative is Cuban. The deeper lineage through Caribbean and Chinese domino games is plausible but folklore-grade.

Who invented Mexican Train dominoes?

Roy and Katie Parsons copyrighted the modern rules in 1994, and Puremco of Waco, Texas marketed the game as Mexican Train, copyrighting its version in 2005. They standardized the game rather than inventing domino trains outright; Puremco-branded sets are sold today by University Games.

What is Dominó Cubano?

Another name for Longana: a Cuban and Latin American four-player game played with a double-9 set, where each player builds a branch off the starting double. It is Mexican Train’s closest traditional relative.

When did Mexican Train become popular?

In the mid-1990s in the United States, following the 1994 Parsons rules and Puremco’s marketing. Boxed double-12 sets with a station hub and train markers became the commercial standard from then on.