Man (word)

The term man (from Proto-Germanic *mann- 'person') and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. In traditional usage, man (without an article) itself refers to the species or to humanity (mankind) as a whole.

The Germanic word developed into Old English mann. In Old English, the word still primarily meant "person" or "human," and was used for men, women, and children alike. The sense "adult male" was very rare, at least in the written language. That meaning is not recorded at all until about the year 1000, over a hundred years after the writings of Alfred the Great and perhaps nearly three centuries after Beowulf. Male and female gender qualifiers were used with mann in compound words.

Adopting the term for humans in general to refer to men is a common development of Romance and Germanic languages, but is not found in most other European languages (Slavic *čelověkъ vs. *mǫžь, Greek ἄνθρωπος vs. άνδρας, Finnish ihminen vs. mies etc.).

According to one etymology, Proto-Germanic *man-n- is derived from a Proto-Indo-European root *man-, *mon- or *men- (see Sanskrit/Avestan manu-, Slavic *mǫž "man, male"). The Slavic forms (Russian muzh "man, male" etc.) are derived from a suffixed stem *man-gyo-.^{[citation needed]}

In Hindu mythology, Manu is the name of the traditional progenitor of humankind who survives a deluge and gives mankind laws. The hypothetically reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form *Manus may also have played a role in Proto-Indo-European religion based on this, if there is any connection with the figure of Mannus — reported by the Roman historian Tacitus in ca. AD 70 to be the name of a traditional ancestor of the Germanic peoples and son of Tuisto; modern sources other than Tacitus have reinterpreted this as "first man".

In Old English the words wer and wīf were used to refer to "a male" and "a female" respectively, while mann had the primary meaning of "person" or "human" regardless of gender. Both wer and wyf may be used to qualify "man"; for example:

God gesceop ða æt fruman twegen men, wer and wif
(then at the beginning, God created two human beings, man and woman)

These terms are also used to qualify compounds; wifmann (variant wimman) developed into the modern word "woman". Wæpned also meant "male", and was used to qualify "man": wæpnedmann (variant wepman, "male person"). There was also the term wæpenwifestre, meaning either an armed woman, or a woman with a penis. These terms were not restricted to adults; Old English also used wæpnedcild and wifcild, literally "male-child" and "female-child". The Old English wer may survive today in the compound "werewolf" (from Old English werwulf, literally "man-wolf"). See wer.