Names for the human species
The common name of the human species in English is historically man, often replaced by the Latinate :wikt:human|human.
In addition to the generally accepted taxonomic name Homo sapiens, other Latin-based names for the human species have been created to refer to various aspects of the human character.
Some of these are ironic of the self-ascribed nobility immanent in the choice of sapiens, others are serious references to human universals that may be considered defining characteristics of the species. Most of these refer to linguistic, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, social or technological abilities taken to be unique to humanity.
In the world's languages
The Indo-European languages have a number of inherited terms for mankind.The etymon of man is found in the Germanic languages, and is cognate with Manu, the name of the human progenitor in Hindu mythology, and found in Indic terms for "man".
Latin homo is derived from an Indo-European root :wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ǵʰmṓ|dʰǵʰm- "earth", as it were "earthling". It has cognates in Baltic, Germanic and Celtic.
This is comparable to the explanation given in the Genesis narrative to the Hebrew Adam "man", derived from a word for "red, reddish-brown". Etymologically, it may be an ethnic or racial classification, but Genesis takes it to refer to the reddish colour of earth, as in the narrative the first man is formed from earth.
Other Indo-European languages name man for his mortality, *mr̥tós meaning "mortal", so in Armenian mard, Persian mard, Sanskrit marta and Greek βροτός meaning "mortal; human".
This is comparable to the Semitic word for "man", represented by Arabic :wikt:إنسان|insan إنسان, from a root for "sick, mortal".
The Arabic word has been influential in the Islamic world, and was adopted in many Turkic languages. The native Turkic word is kiši.
Greek ἄνθρωπος is of uncertain, possibly pre-Greek origin.
Slavic čelověkъ also is of uncertain etymology.
The Chinese character used in East Asian languages is 人, originating as a pictogram of a human being. The reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese word is /ni/. A Proto-Sino-Tibetan :wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/r-mi-n|r-mi-n gives rise to Old Chinese /*miŋ/, modern Chinese 民 mín "people" and to Tibetan མི mi "person, human being".
In some tribal or band societies,
the local endonym is indistinguishable from the word for "men, human beings".
Examples include
Ainu: :wikt:アイヌ#Ainu|ainu,
Inuktitut: :wikt:inuk|inuk,
Bantu: :wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/bàntʊ̀|bantu,
khoe-khoe,
possibly in Uralic: Hungarian :wikt:magyar|magyar, Mansi mäńćī, mańśi, from a Proto-Ugric *mańć- "man, person".
In philosophy
The mixture of serious and tongue-in-cheek self-designation originates with Plato, who on one handdefined man as it were taxonomically as "featherless biped" and on the other as ζῷον πολιτικόν zōon politikon, as "political" or "state-building animal".
Harking back to Plato's zōon politikon are a number of later descriptions of man as an animal with a certain characteristic.
Notably animal rationabile "animal capable of rationality", a term used in medieval scholasticism, and also used by e.g. Carl von Linné 1760, Immanuel Kant 1798.
Based on the same pattern is animal sociale or "social animal"
animal laborans "laboring animal" and
animal symbolicum "symbolizing animal".
Taxonomy
The binomial name Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus.Names for other human species were introduced beginning in the second half of the 19th century.
There is no consensus on the taxonomic delineation between human species, human subspecies and the human races. On the one hand, there is the proposal that H. sapiens idaltu is not distinctive enough to warrant classification as a subspecies. On the other, there is the position that genetic variation in the extant human population is large enough to justify its division into several subspecies.
Linneaeus proposed division into five subspecies, H. sapiens europaeus alongside H. s. afer, H. s. americanus and H. s. asiaticus for Europeans, Africans, Americans and Asians. This convention remained commonly observed until the mid-20th century, sometimes with variations or additions such as H. s. tasmanianus for Australians.
The conventional division of extant human populations into taxonomic subspecies was gradually abandoned beginning in the 1970s.
Similarly, there are proposals to classify Neanderthals and Homo rhodesiensis as subspecies of H. sapiens, although it remains more common to treat these last two as separate species within the genus Homo rather than as subspecies within H. sapiens.
Jared Diamond in The Third Chimpanzee, and Morris Goodman
argued that Homo is not sufficiently removed from Pan to warrant the definition of a separate genus.
Based on the Principle of Priority, this would result in chimpanzees being reclassified as members of the genus Homo, e.g. Homo paniscus, Homo sylvestris, or Homo arboreus. An alternative philosophy suggests that the term Homo sapiens is the misnomer and that humans should be reclassified as Pan sapiens. In either case, a name change of the genus would have implications on the taxonomy of extinct species closely related to humans, including Australopithecus.
A taxonomic name given to the species of the last common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees is Pan prior.
List of binomial names
The following names mimick binomial nomenclature, mostly consisting of Homo followed by a Latin adjective characterizing human nature.Most of them were coined since the mid 20th century in imitation of Homo sapiens in order to make some philosophical point, but some go back to the 18th to 19th century, as in Homo aestheticus vs. Homo oeconomicus; Homo loquens is a serious suggestion by Herder, taking the human species as defined by the use of language;
Homo creator is medieval, coined by Nicolaus Cusanus in reference to man as imago Dei.
| Name | Translation | Notes |
| Homo absconditus | "man the inscrutable" | Soloveitchik 1965 Lonely Man of Faith |
| Homo absurdus | “absurd man” | Giovanni Patriarca Homo Economicus, Absurdus, or Viator? 2014 |
| Homo adaptabilis | “adaptable man” | Giovanni Patriarca Homo Economicus, Absurdus, or Viator? 2014 |
| Homo adorans | "worshipping man" | Man as a worshipping agent, a servant of God or gods. |
| Homo aestheticus | "aesthetic man" | in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the main antagonist of Homo oeconomicus in the internal conflict tormenting the philosopher. Homo aestheticus is "man the aristocrat" in feelings and emotions. Dissanayake uses the term to suggest that the emergence of art was central to the formation of the human species. |
| Homo amans | "loving man" | man as a loving agent; Humberto Maturana 2008 |
| Homo animalis | "man with a soul" | Man as in possession of an animus sive mens, Heidegger. |
| Homo avarus | "man the greedy" | used for Man "activated by greed" by Barnett. |
| Homo combinans | "combining man" | man as the only species that performs the unbounded combinatorial operations that underlie syntax and possibly other cognitive capacities; Cedric Boeckx 2009. |
| Homo contaminatus | "contaminated man" | suggested by Romeo alongside Homo inquinatus "to designate contemporary Man polluted by his own technological advances". |
| Homo creator | "creator man" | due to Nicolaus Cusanus in reference to man as imago Dei; expanded to Homo alter deus by K.-O. Apel. |
| Homo degeneratus | "degenerative man" | a man or the mankind as a whole if they undergo any regressive development ; Andrej Poleev 2013 |
| Homo demens | "mad man" | man as the only being with irrational delusions. Edgar Morin 1973 |
| Homo deus | "human god" | Man as god, endowed with supernatural abilities such as eternal life as outlined in Yuval Noah Harari's 2015 book ' |
| Homo discens | "learning man" | human capability to learn and adapt, Heinrich Roth, Theodor Wilhelm |
| Homo documentator | "documenting man" | human need and propensity to document and organize knowledge, Suzanne Briet in What Is Documentation?, 1951 |
| Homo domesticus | "domestic man" | a human conditioned by the built environment; Oscar Carvajal 2005 Derrick Jensen 2006 |
| Homo duplex | "double man" | Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon 1754. Honoré de Balzac 1846. Joseph Conrad 1903. The idea of the double or divided man is developed by Émile Durkheim to figure the interaction of man's animal and social tendencies. |
| Homo economicus | "economic man" | man as a rational and self-interested agent. |
| Homo educandus | "to be educated" | human need of education before reaching maturity, Heinrich Roth 1966 |
| Homo ethicus | "ethical man" | Man as an ethical agent. |
| Homo excentricus | "not self-centered" | human capability for objectivity, human self-reflection, theory of mind, Helmuth Plessner 1928 |
| Homo faber | "toolmaker man" "fabricator man" "worker man" | Karl Marx, Kenneth Oakley 1949, Max Frisch 1957, Hannah Arendt. |
| Homo ferox | "ferocious man" | T.H. White 1958 |
| Homo generosus | "generous man" | Tor Nørretranders, Generous Man |
| Homo geographicus | "man in place" | Robert D. Sack, Homo Geographicus |
| Homo grammaticus | "grammatical man" | human use of grammar, language, Frank Palmer 1971 |
| Homo hierarchicus | "hierarchical man" | Louis Dumont 1966 |
| Homo humanus | "human man" | used as a term for mankind considered as human in the cultural sense, as opposed to homo biologicus, man considered as a biological species ; the distinction was made in these terms by John N. Deely. |
| Homo hypocritus | "hypocritical man" | Robin Hanson ; also called "man the sly rule bender" |
| Homo imitans | "imitating man" | human capability of learning and adapting by imitation, Andrew N. Meltzoff 1988, Jürgen Lethmate 1992 |
| Homo inermis | "helpless man" | man as defenseless, unprotected, devoid of animal instincts. J. F. Blumenbach 1779, J. G. Herder 1784–1791, Arnold Gehlen 1940 |
| Homo ignorans | "ignorant man" | antonym to sciens |
| Homo investigans | "investigating man" | human curiosity and capability to learn by deduction, Werner Luck 1976 |
| Homo juridicus | "juridical man" | Homo juridicus identifies normative primacy of law, Alain Supiot, 2007. |
| Homo laborans | "working man" | human capability for division of labour, specialization and expertise in craftsmanship and, Theodor Litt 1948 |
| Homo logicus | "the man who wants to understand" | Homo logicus are driven by an irresistible desire to understand how things work. By contrast, Homo sapiens have a strong desire for success. Alan Cooper 1999 |
| Homo loquens | "talking man" | man as the only animal capable of language, J. G. Herder 1772, J. F. Blumenbach 1779. |
| Homo loquax | "chattering man" | parody variation of Homo loquens, used by Henri Bergson, Tom Wolfe, also in A Canticle for Leibowitz. |
| Homo ludens | "playing man" | Friedrich Schiller 1795; Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens ; Hideo Kojima. The characterization of human culture as essentially bearing the character of play. |
| Homo mendax | "lying man" | man with the ability to tell lies. Fernando Vallejo |
| Homo metaphysicus | "metaphysical man" | Arthur Schopenhauer 1819 |
| Homo narrans | "storytelling man" | man not only as an intelligent species, but also as the only one who tells stories, used by Walter Fisher in 1984. Also Pan narrans "storytelling ape" in ' by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen |
| Homo necans | "killing man" | Walter Burkert 1972 |
| Homo neophilus and Homo neophobus | "Novelty-loving man" and "Novelty-fearing man", respectively | coined by characters in the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson to describe two distinct types of human being: one which seeks out and embraces new ideas and situations, and another which clings to habit and fears the new. |
| Homo patiens | "suffering man" | human capability for suffering, Viktor Frankl 1988 |
| Homo viator | "man the pilgrim" | man as on his way towards finding God, Gabriel Marcel 1945 |
| Homo perniciosius | "Destructive man" | Coined by Safron2442 on the platform, Instagram. |
| Homo pictor | "depicting man", "man the artist" | human sense of aesthetics, Hans Jonas 1961 |
| Homo poetica | "man the poet", "man the meaning maker" | Ernest Becker, in The Structure of Evil: An Essay on the Unification of the Science of Man. |
| Homo religiosus | "religious man" | Alister Hardy |
| Homo ridens | "laughing man" | G.B. Milner 1969 |
| Homo reciprocans | "reciprocal man" | man as a cooperative actor who is motivated by improving his environment and wellbeing; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis 1997 |
| Homo sacer | "the sacred man" or "the accursed man" | in Roman law, a person who is banned and may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben takes the concept as the starting point of his main work |
| Homo sanguinis | "bloody man" | A comment on human foreign relations and the increasing ability of man to wage war by anatomist W. M. Cobb in the Journal of the National Medical Association in 1969 and 1975. |
| Homo sciens | "knowing man" | used by Siger of Brabant, noted as a precedent of Homo sapiens by Bazán |
| Homo sentimentalis | "sentimental man" | man born to a civilization of sentiment, who has raised feelings to a category of value; the human ability to empathize, but also to idealize emotions and make them servants of ideas. Milan Kundera in Immortality, Eugene Halton in Bereft of Reason: On the Decline of Social Thought and Prospects for Its Renewal. |
| Homo socius | "social man" | man as a social being. Inherent to humans as long as they have not lived entirely in isolation. Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality. |
| Homo sociologicus | "sociological man" | parody term; the human species as prone to sociology, Ralf Dahrendorf. |
| Homo superior | “superior man” | Coined by the titular character in Olaf Stapledon's novel Odd John to refer to superpowered mutants like himself. Also occurs in Marvel Comics' The X-Men, the BBC series The Tomorrow People, and David Bowie's song “Oh! You Pretty Things” 1971. |
| Homo technologicus | "technological man" | Yves Gingras 2005, similar to homo faber, in a sense of man creating technology as an antithesis to nature. |
In fiction
In fiction, specifically science fiction and fantasy, occasionally names for the human species are introduced reflecting the fictional situation of humans existing alongside other, non-human civilizations.In science fiction, Earthling is frequently used, as it were naming humanity by its planet of origin. Incidentally, this situation parallels the naming motive of ancient terms for humanity, including ":wikt:human|human" itself, derived from a word for "earth" to contrast humans as earth-bound with celestial beings in mythology.