Why are human beings called human beings?
We are all so vastly different from each other.
Each person has completely different characteristics and attributes from other people, no matter how similar they might be in some ways.
Our own country India is a great example of large diversities.
We have so many different languages, cultures, ideas and so much more, and we make up just one country on the entire planet.
Yet, with so much diversity and different cultures, somehow we all come under one significant umbrella term.
This term is something we are all familiar with.
That we are all human beings. So, how did this term come to be? What is the story behind the name we as humans have given ourselves?
Humans and evolution
We need to have a basic understanding of human evolution to get a grasp of why humans are called human beings.
Initially, humans were called homo sapiens, which is our origin. As we developed things changed.
Our body size started to adapt while our brain size also grew with the cognitive abilities that we started to garner.
The human brain is a key factor as its cognitive functions have led to us being the humans we are today.
At the embryonic stage, humans are fundamentally the same.
Yet to an advanced degree, we have built multiple things.
This human body has managed to cultivate human cultures making us distinct organisms that have a wide range of functions.
The origin of the name
As we all know, most words in our current English language find their origins in languages such as Latin and Greek. "Human beings" find their home in similar origins.
When we google search we get a bunch of different answers and ideas as to why we have been lovingly named human beings.
One dissatisfactory and commo answer that people get is that “All living things are beings, we happen to be human beings”
Another common yet unnecessarily complex answer given is “When the term “being” came into use during the 14th century, the church had decided that God and angels were self-aware “beings” of the highest order.
Genesis said that humans had been made in the image of God, so they were also accorded the title of “being.”
Human beings as a verb
These answers are not the best and hence we have to look at this from another perspective.
When you describe a place, person, or situation to someone when you tell a story you are creating a picture in another person’s mind, and you literally cannot do it without the verb “to be.”
So if the verb “to be” is the verb of creation consider this:
The reason we are called human beings is not to describe our existence as human, but to declare ourselves as Creators.
Now that we know humans are human beings, another important question comes into existence. We are beings, but we are being what?
Unlike any other creature on this earth, a human being can manifest as any of infinite possibilities.
A human being could manifest as anything. Not physically of course, but in terms of our behavior, moods, capacities, vocations, etc., we are the only possibility.
That’s why we are curious to know one another.
Hence, we have been gifted with the name human being. It almost establishes our superpower of being able to make whatever we want of ourselves and of the resources we are given by nature.
