Mexican Train Dominoes gets its name from a mix of history, workers, and the way the game looks on the table.

Quick Scoop

  • The game likely began as a Chinese domino game (related to Pai Gow) that traveled to Cuba and then to Mexico and the United States through migrant labor and rail work.
  • In the U.S., people saw Mexican and other Latin American workers playing a version with branching lines of dominoes that looked like train tracks, which inspired the “train” part of the name.
  • The specific label Mexican Train seems to have caught on in the U.S. because Americans associated the game with Mexican and other Latin American railroad workers who popularized it there.

Mini History: From China to “Mexican”

  • The family of games behind Mexican Train likely traces back to Chinese domino games such as Pai Gow, which were later adapted in Cuba into games like Longana or similar “train-style” variants.
  • Chinese laborers working in Cuban sugar fields in the 1800s are believed to have introduced these domino styles, after which Cuban and then Mexican laborers carried the game into U.S. railroad camps.

Why “Train”?

  • The modern rules use a central hub with multiple lines (or “trains”) of dominoes branching outward, visually resembling a set of railway tracks.
  • Each player builds a personal “train,” and there is usually a shared “Mexican train,” so the track-like pattern became a natural metaphor that stuck in the game’s marketing and rules.

Why “Mexican”?

  • In U.S. railroad history, Americans often saw Cuban and Mexican laborers playing this style of dominoes, and the game became associated—accurately or not—specifically with Mexican workers.
  • Over time, when commercial rules were formalized and sold in the 1990s, publishers leaned into the already common nickname “Mexican Train,” cementing it as the standard name in the U.S.

Is It Actually From Mexico?

  • Most historical reconstructions suggest the game’s structure is more closely tied to Cuban adaptations of Chinese domino games than to an original Mexican invention.
  • In different places the same or related games may have other names, but in the U.S. “Mexican Train Dominoes” became the catchy, marketable title that reflects how Americans encountered it, not a strictly accurate geographic origin.

TL;DR: It is called Mexican Train Dominoes mainly because Americans saw Mexican and other Latin American workers playing a branching, track-like domino game in rail camps, and the nickname tied their identity (Mexican) to the game’s visual layout (train), then stuck when commercial rules were later published.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.