# Words in IE languages meaning "man/human" & their roots



## miasam

Hi all!
What are the words for "man" or "human" in the Indo European languages that you know and what are their etymologies?

for example: 
Russian - *челове́к*  "From PIE _*(s)kʷel-_ (“crowd, people”).The latter part is akin to Lithuanian _vaĩkas_ (“child”), Latvian _vaiks_ (“boy”) and Old Prussian _waiх_ (“manservant”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European _*weyk-_" 
or *мужчи́на* "From Old East Slavic_*мѫжьщина_ (*mǫžĭščina), from Proto-Slavic _*mǫžьščina_, from from _*mǫžь_ (man) +‎ _*-ьskъ (characteristic of, typical of)"_


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## Circunflejo

In Spanish, man is hombre (from Latin homo) and human is humano (from Latin humānus). I don't know the etymology of the Latin words but I guess that a look to Wiktionary might help you with that.


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## fdb

To be honest, questions about how to say XYZ in “the Indo-European languages” (all of them?) are not very useful. You could at least in the first instance have a look at the “translation” box on “Wiktionary” (not always correct, but at least it is something).

That said, the most widely spread IE word for “man (male human being)” is probably the one represented by Latin vir, Sanskrit and Avestan vīra-, Lithuanian výras, Tocharian wir, Old Irish fer, Gothic wair, and others.


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> Latin vir, Sanskrit and Avestan vīra-, Lithuanian výras, Tocharian wir, Old Irish fer, Gothic wair, and others.


I am not sure if the Avestan vīra- has survived into Persian but we now have _mard_ for 'man' and _mardom_ for 'people'.


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## Perseas

Also, man (male):
I.E. *ner-
Μ.Gr.: _άνδρας<ἀνήρ (anḗr)_
Sanskrit: _nár_
Welsh: _ner_
Armenian: _ayr_
Albanian: _njer_


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## PersoLatin

Perseas said:


> Also, man (male):
> I.E. *ner-
> Μ.Gr.: _άνδρας<ἀνήρ_
> Sanskrit: _nár_
> Welsh: _ner_
> Armenian: _ayr_
> Albanian: _njer_


Persian: _nar _(generic male, _mādé_ generic female)


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## desi4life

PersoLatin said:


> I am not sure if the Avestan vīra- has survived into Persian but we now have _mard_ for 'man' and _mardom_ for 'people'.



And that is cognate with Sanskrit _"martya", "marta"_ and Avestan _"maṧiia", _which mean "mortal, man".


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## apmoy70

Perseas said:


> Also, man (male):
> I.E. *ner-
> Μ.Gr.: _άνδρας<ἀνήρ (anḗr)_
> Sanskrit: _nár_
> Welsh: _ner_
> Armenian: _ayr_
> Albanian: _njer_


Human is  *«άνθρωπος»* [ˈan.θrɔ.pɔs] (masc.) < Classical masc. noun *«ἄνθρωπος» ắntʰrōpŏs* --> _human being, man_.
Doric (the dialect spoken in ancient Sparta) had the feminine form *«ἀνθρωπώ» ăntʰrōpṓ* for woman (which hasn't survived either in Standard MoGr or any other Modern Greek dialect, including Tsakonian which is believed to be the only MoGr dialect descended from Doric).
Its etymology is unclear; per Beekes the word is probably of Pre-Greek substrate origin.
Kuiper accepts it as a derivative of the 3rd declension masc. noun *«δρώψ» drṓps *(nom. sing.), *«δρωπός» drōpós *(gen. sing.) --> _man_ a Pre-Greek gloss, which produced *«ἄνθρωπος»* after prenasalization and prothetic vowel.
For other linguists it's a compound:
*«Ἀνήρ» ănḗr* (3rd declension masc. nom. sing.), *«ἀνδρός» ăndrós* (masc. gen. sing.) --> _man, male human being_ (PIE *h₂ner- _man_ cf Skt. नृ (nṛ́), Arm. այր (ayr), Alb. njer, _human being, person_) + *«ὤψ» ṓps* (with disputed gender, masc. or fem.) --> _eye, face, countenace_ (PIE *h₃kʷ- _to see_ cf Skt. ईक्षते (īks̩ate), _to observe_).


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## PersoLatin

desi4life said:


> And that is cognate with Sanskrit _"martya", "marta"_ and Avestan _"maṧiia", _which mean "mortal, man".


Yes..but..

I know to die or death has well understood PIE roots and the following Persian words: _mordan_/to die, _mordé_/dead _marg_/death _amordād_/immortals, show that Persian as an IE language, is no exception in that respect. That said, I have some doubts or questions on whether _martya _meant mortal all those thousands years ago, either in Sanskrit or Old Persian and that sense of it, is a modern misnomer. The concept of 'man' being mortal requires a level of sophistication that usually comes after development of language, I am sure someone will correct me on that.


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## Keith Bradford

miasam said:


> ...What are the words for "man" or "human" in the Indo European languages that you know and what are their etymologies?...


Beware!  You have combined "man" and "human" as if the English accident that they both contain the letters m-a-n were perhaps significant.  This isn't the case.

*Man *comes through Old English from German and ultimately Teutonic _man(n)_. The ultimate origin of this is unknown.
*Human* comes from Latin_ humanus, _from _homo, _Old Latin _hemō, _the earthly one (cognate with_ humus_).

I have been in meetings where it was alleged that _homo sapiens_ was sexist because it implied male.  That would of course be _vir sapiens_ in Latin, but there's no arguing with prejudice.


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## ahvalj

miasam said:


> Hi all!
> What are the words for "man" or "human" in the Indo European languages that you know and what are their etymologies?
> 
> for example:
> Russian - *челове́к*  "From PIE _*(s)kʷel-_ (“crowd, people”).The latter part is akin to Lithuanian _vaĩkas_ (“child”), Latvian _vaiks_ (“boy”) and Old Prussian _waiх_ (“manservant”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European _*weyk-_"


The Slavic _čelověkъ_ "human" only has several (and trivial) lexical derivatives (_čelověčьskъ, čelověčьjь, čelověčьnъ_), so it may actually be a rather recent word. The traditional interpretation relates its first component to _čeļadь_ "household; servants", and so the original meaning of _čelověkъ_ may be similar to the original sense of "valet" (*_vassallettus_), which, interestingly, still existed in Russian a century ago (_Если к вам пришли гости, а у вас ничего нет, пошлите человека в погреб…_).



fdb said:


> That said, the most widely spread IE word for “man (male human being)” is probably the one represented by Latin vir, Sanskrit and Avestan vīra-, Lithuanian výras, Tocharian wir, Old Irish fer, Gothic wair, and others.


This word may have survived in Slavic as well, in the form of _vira_ "wergeld" — that dictionaries usually explain as a Germanic loan, though it is impossible phonetically (Germanic, as well as Celtic and Italic shorten the unstressed long vowel here by Dybo's law — see _Дыбо ВА · 2008 · Германское сокращение индоевропейских долгот, германский «Verschärfung» (закон Хольцмана) и балто-славянская акцентология:_ 558–567), whereas _vir-, _with its stable initial stress in Russian, is the expected fully regular phonetic counterpart of the Lithuanian _vyr-_ with the dominant acute of the first syllable.

P. S. The initial accent in _vyras_ (and in _vira,_ if it is indeed the same root) is due to Hirt's law.


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## EranShahr

The general Persian word is "mard", from old persian "m_ā_rty_ā_"

But we have a few more words: "doshman" means enemy (literally bad man), "bahman" meaning nice person, kohrom_ā_n meaning hero (literally man of work, corrupted as "qahrem_ān"_). It is derived from a PIE root _*man-_ (see Sanskrit//Avestan _manu-_, _slavic mǫž_ "man, male", English man).

Another word in Persian meaning hero, "huvir" (literally good person, not used daily but used alot by poets). see Latin vir, Sanskrit and Avestan vīra-, English wer.


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## fdb

EranShahr said:


> "doshman" means enemy (literally bad man), "bahman" meaning nice person,



No. They are from the Old Iranian root manyu "mind".



EranShahr said:


> kohrom_ā_n meaning hero (literally man of work, corrupted as "qahrem_ān"_). It is derived from a PIE root _*man-_ (see Sanskrit//Avestan _manu-_, _slavic mǫž_ "man, male", English man).



No. It is from Middle Persian kār-framān "commander of works".


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## EranShahr

fdb said:


> No. They are from the Old Iranian root manyu "mind".



Hmm, that's an interesting theory. One that I had never heard before. According to Mo'in Dictionary, the second biggest and one of the most important Persian Dictionaries:

قهرمان [ ق َ رَ ، معرب] : گویا درست این واژه « کهرمان»  است و « قهرمان»  عربی شده است. و ریشه ی قهرمان یا همان کهرمان مرد کار است، به معنی مرد آدمی و  کارآمدی بی مانند. « من»  در واژگان دیگری مانند دش+من به+من هو+من نیز دیده می شود​
Qahreman: It has been said that the correct form of kohroman is qahreman, and qahreman is the arabicized for of it. The root of qahreman or kohroman is man of work, man of the people. man could be seen in other words like dosh+man (enemy), bah+man (friend), hu+man(avestan and middle persian for human).
دشمن [ دُ م َ  ]: دُش
.همان دُژ است به معنی «بد». دشمن یعنی من بد، دشمن که در کردی دُژمِن گفته می شود یعنی آدم بد در بدابر بَهمَن که آدم خوب است​dosh is the same as dozh, which means bad. doshman ,which is dezhman in Kurdish, is the antonym of bahman which means good man.


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## fdb

Avestan duš-mainiiu- “having an evil mind”; vohu- manah- “good mind”.


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## PersoLatin

EranShahr said:


> dosh is the same as dozh, which means bad. doshman ,which is dezhman in Kurdish, is the antonym of bahman which means good man.


دشمن/doshman/dushman   means 'enemy' someone with bad intentions i.e. 'bad mind' and not a 'bad man' per se. Not all 'bad men' are enemies and not all enemies are 'bad men'.


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## fdb

To return to the question under discussion: The English (and Germanic) word “man” is presumably cognate with Sanskrit manu- “man”, also the name of the primal man Manu-. There are related nouns in Sanskrit and the other Indo-Aryan languages, but curiously the ONLY cognate in Iranian is the Avestan name of the mythical king Manuš-čiϑra- “the seed of Manu”, and its Middle and New Persian derivative Manūčihr.

It has been claimed that these “man” words are cognate with Indo-European *men “to think”, but this is debated.


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## francisgranada

For curiosity, in Romani ("Gypsy language") spoken in Central Europe the word for "human being" is _manuš_. The word for _man _(male), but exclusively of Romani ethnicity, is _rom_. 

P.S. What is the etymology of _rom_?


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## fdb

francisgranada said:


> P.S. What is the etymology of _rom_?


Turner derives it from Sanskrit:

               5570 *ḍōmba* m. ʻ man of low caste living by singing and music ʼ


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## francisgranada

fdb said:


> Turner derives it from Sanskrit:
> 5570 *ḍōmba* m. ʻ man of low caste living by singing and music ʼ


This is interesting, because they traditionally really live by singing and music  . However, I'm not convinced that this tradition goes back to the times when they still lived somewhere in India.

Is the sound change _ḍ_ > _r_ (_ḍōmba > rom[a]_) "typical" in (some) Indo-Aryan languages?


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## Awwal12

francisgranada said:


> However, I'm not convinced that this tradition goes back to the times when they still lived somewhere in India


That is really likely, considering how Romani customs directly prohibit most kinds of jobs.


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## Delvo

francisgranada said:


> This is interesting, because they traditionally really live by singing and music  . However, I'm not convinced that this tradition goes back to the times when they still lived somewhere in India.


It wouldn't need to. They could leave India with that word still having its older meaning at that time, then shift its meaning any time since then.

There's another group of people whose ancestors left India and traveled west, but didn't get as far, who call themselves "Dom". Their language, Domari, has lost its retroflexes. It's the same root word as in "Romany", with the same modern meaning, so either it had the same kind of shift in meaning in both groups after they split, or the shift in meaning happened before they split. But they could very well have split in the Middle East, not India, so that wouldn't narrow down the time range very much even if we could say it had to be before or after that split.



francisgranada said:


> Is the sound change _ḍ_ > _r_ (_ḍōmba > rom[a]_) "typical" in (some) Indo-Aryan languages?


Not in others I think, but it might be systematic in Romany. I have only a few examples, not nearly enough to defend my case if anybody wants to contradict me, but...

Sanskrit maɳɖaka (bread)... Romany manrro/maro
Sanskrit dugdʰa (milk)... Romany tʰud
Persian amrūd (pear)... Romany amrol
Persian āzmūdan (test, try)... Romany zumav

It looks like something happened to the D-like sounds that were already present in the language by the time they got through Persia... they aren't lost in the same way, but they are lost; the only survivor I know of is the aspirated one that came right after another voiced plosive and lost its aspiration.

But then, when they got farther west...

Ossetian wærdon (cart)... Romany vordon/verdo
Greek drómos (road)... Romany drom
Greek skiádi (hat)... Romany stadǐ

So by that time, if there had indeed been a pattern of losing D-like sounds, that process then ended, which meant the language could keep any new Ds it picked up after that.


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## francisgranada

Thank you, Delvo, for the comprehensive and interesting explanation.


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## clamor

In *Armenian *we use the word _*մարդ *_[mɑɾt̪ʰ], from Classical Armenian _mard_. According to Mallory J.P. and Adams D. (2006) it is derived from P.I.E. *mr̥tós ''mortal'' (in case we have forgotten...). Therefore it is akin to Persian mard_._


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## PersoLatin

clamor said:


> According to Mallory J.P. and Adams D. (2006) it is derived from P.I.E. *mr̥tós ''mortal'' (in case we have forgotten...). Therefore it is akin to Persian mard_._


This is a general comment about the link between Persian _mard _and _mortal_, I can not understand how the scholars have come up with this, weren't women also mortal, did only men die in old times, or were men so ignorant and up themselves that they didn't consider a woman's death as sign of their mortality.


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## clamor

PersoLatin said:


> This is a general comment about the link between Persian _mard _and _mortal_, I can not understand how the scholars have come up with this, weren't women also mortal, did only men die in old times, or were men so ignorant and up themselves that they didn't consider a woman's death as sign of their mortality.



I don't know Persian, but in Armenian the first meaning of _mard_ was ''human'' (_homo_). There was another word for ''he-human'', _ayr_, corresponding to Latin _vir_. So its current meaning of ''human'' is the result of an extension.

Isn't it the same in Persian?


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## PersoLatin

clamor said:


> I don't know Persian, but in Armenian the first meaning of _mard_ was ''human'' (_homo_). There was another word for ''he-human'', _ayr_, corresponding to Latin _vir_. So its current meaning of ''human'' is the result of an extension.
> 
> Isn't it the same in Persian?


Yes there is نر/nar which means 'male' in Persian.

In Persian we have *mar*g/death, *mord*é/dead, *mord*an/to die a*mord*âd/immortal etc, so the 'similarity' between mard/man and mortal are very obvious, but I still can not link them for the reason I gave in post #25.

Maybe you have addressed my question in your comments above but I don't see it.


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## clamor

PersoLatin said:


> In Persian we have *mar*g/death, *mord*é/dead, *mord*an/to die a*mord*âd/immortal etc, so the 'similarity' between mard/man and mortal are very obvious, but I still can not link them for the reason I gave in post #25.



Actually, my question is - when mard ''derived'' from *mr̥tós (maybe long before Persian formed), didn't it apply to both men and women? I don't know if I understood your post, actually.


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## PersoLatin

clamor said:


> didn't it apply to both men and women?


Is this a question for me? it sounds like my own question. Basically both men and women are mortal, so why is it that 'mard/mart' applies to men only? In English 'man' means 'human being' as well 'male human' and female human i.e. a 'wo*man*' has a 'man' element in it.

Anyway mortality as a concept seems a little too advanced, for those early human beings, to use as a model or inspiration for the male name.


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## clamor

I found an ancestor of *mard *that could have referred to all human beings: *martiya- *in Old Persian. Is it true?

Thus ''mortal'' could have applied to both men and women at the origin of the word.


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## fdb

Old Persian martiya- is grammatically masculine. But of course that is not decisive.


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## PersoLatin

clamor said:


> I found an ancestor of *mard *that could have referred to all human beings: *martiya- *in Old Persian. Is it true?


This may be relevant, in Persian _*mard*om_  means 'people' and by extension human beings.

Also if 'mr*d*' (no short vowel representations in Persian/Iranic scripts) is modelled after a word that meant 'mortal', then the final /d/ on it must be the result of adding /d/ to the present stem of 'to die' i.e. 'mr', to get 'mrd' which is its past tense, if this is right then those early Iranians developed 'grammar' before the word for man.

Note - The past tense of all verbs in Persian are formed by adding mainly /d/ but also /t/, to the present stem of a verb.


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