Rufino José Cuervo Urisarri (Bogotá, Colombia) was a Colombian writer, linguist, and philologist.

He was the youngest son of María Francisca Urisarri Tordecillas and Dr. Rufino Cuervo y Barreto, a politician, lawyer, journalist and vice president of the Republic between 1845 and 1851.

About this topic, he wrote his book Apuntaciones críticas sobre lenguaje bogotano (Critical Notes About Bogotan Language, 1867), which is still an important reference in the study of the American Spanish language.

This work is updated on a regular basis by the Caro y Cuervo Institute.

He was worried about the segregationist trend in spoken Spanish and thought that this phenomenon was similar to the events following the fall of the Roman Empire, after which Latin gradually began splitting into several independent Romance languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.