What is a zinneke, anyway?

Just as we have a statue called Manneken Pis (little pissing boy) and another called Janneke Pis (a little pissing girl), so we also have a Zinneke Pis! And here he is, in the rue des Chartreux, doing what comes naturally.

In the Brussels dialect, a zinneke is a mongrel dog and by extension, a person of mixed ethnic origin, just like the Brussels dialect itself which is a mixture of French and Flemish with influences from Spanish, from the time when the Low Countries were under Spanish rule. Brussels grew up around a river - long covered over for health reasons - called the Senne (FR)/Zenne (NL). Some say the name "zinneke" was used of the dogs that roamed around near the river, others that it refers to the fact that they deserved to be thrown into the river. Anyway, by using this term to describe themselves, Brusselers celebrate their multicultural background and current ethnic diversity.