#Word Stories: HUMAN (en)
This article launches a series at the crosspoint of history, linguistics, and culture. We research the origins of popular words and expressions, and cover relevant areas of literature and philosophy.
All of us are human, which raises the question of the origin of the word.
The word was first attested in English in the middle of the 15th century in the form of ‘humain, humaigne’, borrowed from 12-century French (‘umain’), ultimately from Latin (‘’humanus) and ‘homo’ (i.e. ‘man’, ‘person’). Today it is widely used to refer to different species of the genus Homo (Homo erectus, Homo habilis etc.). Those include ‘Homo sapiens’, the only extant member of the Homo genus . The term was coined in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus, a renowned Swedish zoology and botany pioneer.
The word ‘Homo’ comes from Proto-Italic *hemō. It goes further back to the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵʰm̥mṓ , alternatively *(dh)ghomon- , which means ‘earthling’, as opposed to the gods. It is derived from *dʰéǵʰōm (“earth”), a word that boasts a considerable number of descendants across languages and cultures. (For Proto-Indo-European, see below)
Notably, ‘Homo’ is cognate with Latin ‘humus’, i.e. ‘earth, ground’. To cite an example, it can be found in the medieval academic commercium song ‘De Brevitate Vitae’, commonly referred to as ‘Gaudeamus igitur’ by its first line. The lyrics apparently originate from a 13th-century Latin manuscript (1287).
‘Post jucundam juventutem,
Post molestam senectutem,
Nos habebit humus’,
Literally: ‘After a pleasant youth, after a troublesome old age, the earth will have us’.
Interestingly, the word ‘humus’ is used in modern English for organic compounds found in the soil.
Further Descendants and Connections
Naturally, Latin-derived cognates are found in most Romance languages (French ‘homme’, Spanish ‘hombre’, Italian ‘uomo’ etc.), all meaning ‘man’.
Another curious descendant is nēmō (“no one”), from *ne hemō (=”no man”). The word was internationalized by Jules Verne and his character Captain Nemo. The latter made his first appearance in the novels ”Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas” (1870) and “The Mysterious Island” (1875).
A few less obvious connections are:
- English groom
- German Bräutigam (German for ‘groom’, the ‘-gam’ part)
Additionally, more distant cognates include:
- Latin ‘humilis’ lit. ‘low, close to the ground’, cf. humble, humility, humiliation
- Proto-Balto-Slavic *źémē, *źémijā, cf. Latvian zeme, Lithuanian žẽmė, Russian/Ukrainian земля (zeml’a), Polish ziemia, Czech země
- Ancient Greek χαμαί (khamaí, “on the ground”).
- Sanskrit क्ष (kṣá)
- Old Lithuanian žmuõ (“man”)
- Gothic 𐌲𐌿𐌼𐌰 (guma, «man»)
- Old English guma (“man”).
‘Earth’ / ‘Human’ Relationship
Interestingly, the parallel between ‘earth/dust’ and ‘man’ comes from Semitic languages and is attested in biblical sources. In Genesis (18), Abraham says: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes”.
As an example, the connection between earth and man is seen in Hebrew: אָדָם (adám, “man”), אֲדָמָה (adamá, “soil”).
Further reading:
Zeme / Proto-Balto-Slavic — Wiktionary
Homo — A Latin Dictionary / Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short
Origins of ‘Human’ — Joseph Vadella / Pennsylvania State University
*Proto-Indo-European (‘PIE’), spoken ca. 7,000–10,000 years ago, is a reconstructed ancestor of present-day Indo-European languages. This language family encompasses hundreds of languages spoken in major parts of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the Indian subcontinent. Today, eight subfamilies are still in existence: Albanian, Armenian, Italic/Romance, Germanic, Hellenic, Balto-Slavic, as well as Indo-Iranian languages. Some of them have expanded through colonization and international contacts, and are now used on a global scale. They are spoken by 46% of the world’s population as a first language.
