2855: The Rise of ‘Human’ Oct 14, 2024

The word ‘human’ is very common today and is increasingly used in a generic like ‘person’ instead of its previous relegation to the field of science. It is easy to see why it replaced ‘man’, with ‘humankind’ rising to similar levels as ‘mankind’ in recent decades, and ‘mankind’ on a precipitous decline, but also ‘human’ is beginning to be interchanged with ‘person’ outside of form settings. The word in particular exploded in popularity over man starting in the early 1960’s and especially in the next decade, and is now seems to be losing its academic connotations.

Somewhat ironically, ‘man’ in English was not always gendered, but later replaced the word ‘wer’. German as well now had the word ‘Mann’ (man; husband) but uses ‘man’ as the pronoun ‘one’, and far more commonly than in English wherein most people opt for the 2ⁿᵈ person ‘you’ (acting like 3ʳᵈ person). Meanwhile, ‘human’ comes from the same Latin root as ‘homem’, ‘homme’, and hombre (in Portuguese, French, and Spanish) for ‘a man’.