Homo - Naming

Naming

Further information: List of alternative names for the human species

In biological sciences, particularly anthropology and palaeontology, the common name for all members of the genus Homo is "human".

The word homo is Latin, in the original sense of "human being", or "man" (in the gender-neutral sense). The word "human" itself is from Latin humanus, an adjective cognate to homo, both thought to derive from a Proto-Indo-European word for "earth" reconstructed as *dhǵhem-.

The binomial name Homo sapiens is due to Carl Linnaeus (1758).

Names for other species were coined beginning in the second half of the 19th century (H. neanderthalensis 1864, H. erectus 1892).

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Famous quotes containing the word naming:

    See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
    One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—
    Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!—
    Yet will I call on him!—O, spare me, Lucifer!—
    Where is it now? ‘T is gone; and see where God
    Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!—
    Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
    And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
    Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

    Husband,
    who am I to reject the naming of foods
    in a time of famine?
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    The night is itself sleep
    And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
    Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)