Conquian

Conquian is a card game whose origins are in dispute. Some believe the game originated in Spain hundreds of years ago, and was then brought to Mexico. Others strongly believe the game actually originated in Mexico in the mid-1800s. It was first described as Coon Can in 1887 and then in detail in R. F. Foster's Hoyle in 1897. According to David Parlett, it is an ancestor to all modern rummy games, a kind of proto-Gin Rummy. He also notes that the 1920s American card-game writer Robert F. Foster “traces Conquian back to the early 1860s.”

The name is thought to either derive from "con quién" – Spanish "with whom", or from the Chinese game Kon Khin, a variation of the earlier game Khanhoo. It is sometimes corrupted to Coon Can,Councan, Conca and Cuncá, a South American variation of the game. In 19th-century Mexican literature the word is spelled cunquián, showing thus it has nothing to do with the phrase "¿Con quién?". It is much more tempting to relate Conquian to the 19th-century Philippine card game Kungkian, or Kungkiyang, which Ilocano and Cebuano dictionaries define as "A card game, the same as pañggiñggí [i.e. Panguingue], except that there are only two players."