random question

[paperclippy]

Poll "Human" vs. "Hominid"

Comments

[sillygoosegirl]

I always thought homo sapien was the Latin, while human was the common name for the same.

[mbrubeck]

Yeah, I took "human" to be the common name of the species, not the genus. Especially I don't know any other common English name for Homo sapiens. In the few cases where the difference matters, it seems to be useful to say things like "Humans and Neanderthals" to name two different hominid species.

Wikipedia seems to contradict itself. Human says that it means a member of Homo sapiens. Archaic Homo sapiens and Homo (genus) carefully do not use the word "human" for any species or subspecies besides modern Homo sapiens sapiens.

[mbrubeck]

Interesting: American Heritage thinks it's a candy mint and a breath mint. "A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens."

[paperclippy]

I checked several dictionaries and got conflicting results as well. Some said any member of the genus Homo, some avoided any reference to scientific names for the species at all, some said things along the lines of "any member of the genus Homo which has the capacity for speech."

[litch]

A reasonable argument that h. neanderthalis was human could be made (I disagree but wouldn't think you're batty), but h. erectus? h. habilis?? Chimps are as close as those two.