Man (word)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the word "man". For adult males, see man. Look up Man or man in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
For other uses see Man (disambiguation)
The term man (from Proto-Germanic *mannaz or *manwaz "man, person") and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. This is indeed the oldest usage of "man". The word developed into Old English man, mann "human being, person," (cf. also German Mann, Old Norse maðr, Gothic manna "man"). The native English term for an adult male was wer. The native English form of the "earthling" designation cognate to Latin homo was guma.
*Mannaz or *Manwaz is also the Proto-Germanic reconstructed name of the m-rune
Etymology
It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European root *man- (cf. Sanskrit/Avestan manu-, Czech muž "man, male").[1] In Hindu mythology, Manu is a title accorded the progenitor of humankind. Sometimes, the word is connected with the root *men- "to think" (cognate to mind). Restricted use in the sense "adult male" only began to occur in late Old English, around 1000 AD, and the word formerly expressing male sex, wer had died out by 1300 (but survives in a few words such as werewolf and weregild). The original sense of the word is preserved in mankind, from Old English mancynn.
In Old English the words wer and wīf (also wǣpmann and wīfmann) were used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, while mann was gender neutral (as is the case with modern German man; the modern German gender-neutral noun is Mensch). In Middle English man displaced wer as the term for "male human," whilst wyfman (which eventually evolved into woman) was retained for "female human". Man does continue to carry its original sense of "human" however, resulting in an asymmetry sometimes criticized as sexist.[2] It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European base *man-, with a variant *mon- (cf. Sanskrit/Avestan manu-). The Slavic forms (Russian muzh "man, male" etc.) are derived from a suffixed stem *mon-gyo-. *Manus in Indo-European mythology was the first man, see Mannus, Manu (Hinduism)
Some etymologies treat the root as an independent one, as does the American Heritage Dictionary. Of the etymologies that do make connections with other Indo-European roots, man "the thinker" is the most traditional — that is, the word is connected with the root *men- "to think" (cognate to mind). This etymology presumes that man is the one who thinks, which fits the definition of man given by René Descartes as a "rational animal", indebted to Aristotle's ζῷον λόγoν ἔχον, which is also the basis for Homo sapiens (see Human self-reflection). This etymology is however not generally accepted. In Finnish, which is not a Germanic language, there is a possible analogy of this etymology. In Finnish, "human" is "ihminen", which means somebody that is wondering.
A second etymology postulates the reduction of the ancestor of "human" to the ancestor of "man". Human is from *dhghem-, "earth". *(dh)ghom-on- is some sort of “earthling” . The word would reduce to just its final syllable, *m-on-. You may find this point of view in Eric Partridge, Origins, under man. Such a derivation might be credible if we had only the Germanic form (also note that Tuisto, father of Mannus, is the god who sprang from the earth), but the attested Indo-Iranian manu virtually excludes the possibility.
_____
There you go. 'Man' and 'Mankind' is not sexist or exclusionary. The use of the word 'man' to mean 'male' is a rather modern invention, and true 'political correctness' would be recognizing it, not diluting the meaning my replacing 'man' with 'one'. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, they were going places no member of mankind had ever been, not no 'one' (which could include any alien race).
If you must change it, the best rendition would be 'where no human has gone before', but then you'll get people complaining that it should be 'where no human or huwoman has gone before'...
