In addition to the generally accepted taxonomic name Homo sapiens (Latin: 'wise man', Linnaeus 1758), other Latin-based names for the human species have been created to refer to various aspects of the human character.

The common name of the human species in English is historically man (from Germanic mann), often replaced by the partly Latinate phrase human being (since the 16th century).

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 (including , , and ).

Latin is derived from the Indo-European root dʰǵʰm- , as it were, . It has cognates in Baltic (Old Prussian ), Germanic (Gothic ) and Celtic (Old Irish ). This is comparable to the explanation given in the Genesis narrative to the Hebrew Adam () , derived from a word for . Etymologically, it may be an ethnic or racial classification (after "reddish" skin colour contrasting with both "white" and "black"), but Genesis takes it to refer to the reddish colour of earth, as in the narrative the first man is formed from earth.Strong's Concordance

Other Indo-European languages name man for his mortality, meaning , so in Armenian , Persian , Sanskrit and Greek meaning . This is comparable to the Semitic word for , represented by Arabic insan (cognate with Hebrew ʼenōš ), from a root for .Strong's Concordance H852, H605. The Arabic word has been influential in the Islamic world, and was adopted in many Turkic languages. The native Turkic word is .Starostin, Sergei; Dybo, Anna; Mudrak, Oleg (2003), *k`i̯uĺe in: Etymological dictionary of the Altaic languages (Handbuch der Orientalistik; VIII.8), Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill (starling.rinet.ru).

Greek () is of uncertain, possibly pre-Greek origin.Romain Garnier proposed another etymology in his 2007 article "Nouvelles réflexions étymologiques autour du grec ἄνθρωπος", deriving it from Proto-Indo-European *n̥dʰreh₃kʷó- ('that which is below'), hence "earthly, human". Slavic also is of uncertain etymology.its first element čelo- may be cognate with Sanskrit kula- "family, sept; herd"; the second element -věkъ may be cognate with Latvian vaiks, Lithuanian vaĩkas "boy, child". Max Vasmer, Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (1950–58).

The Chinese character used in East Asian languages is , originating as a pictogram of a human being. The reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese word is .Baxter-Sagart reconstruction of Old Chinese (Version 1.1, 20 September 2014) A Proto-Sino-Tibetan r-mi(j)-n gives rise to Old Chinese , modern Chinese and to Tibetan .

In some languages and tribal or band societies, the local endonym is indistinguishable from the word for . Examples include: Ainu ainu, Inuktitut: inuk, Bantu: bantu, , possibly in Uralic: Mansi , from Proto-Ugric .

In philosophy The mixture of serious and tongue-in-cheek self-designation originates with Plato, who on one hand defined man taxonomically as a "featherless biped",Plato defined a human as a featherless, biped animal and was applauded. Diogenes of Sinope plucked a chicken and brought it into the lecture hall, saying: "Here is Plato's human!", Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Philosophers 6.40 and on the other as (), as "political" or "state-building animal" (Aristotle's term, based on Plato's Statesman).

Harking back to Plato's 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 (with reference to Aristotle), and also used by Carl Linnaeus (1760) and Immanuel Kant (1798). Based on the same pattern are or , (Hannah Arendt 1958), and animal symbolicum (Ernst Cassirer 1944).

Etymology

The binomial name Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus.. Note: In 1959, Linnaeus was designated as the lectotype for Homo sapiens (Stearn, W. T. 1959. "The background of Linnaeus's contributions to the nomenclature and methods of systematic biology", Systematic Zoology 8 (1): 4-22, p. 4) which means that following the nomenclatural rules, Homo sapiens was validly defined as the animal species to which Linnaeus belonged.

List of binomial names

The following names mimic 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 (either serious or ironic), 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;Compare alalus "incapable of speech" as the species name given to Java Man fossil, at the time (1895) taken to reflect a pre-human stage of "ape-man" (Pithecanthropus). Herder's Homo loquens was parodied by Henri Bergson (1943) as Homo loquax i.e. Man as chattering or overly talkative. Homo creator is medieval, coined by Nicolaus Cusanus in reference to man as imago Dei.