Everything about Mannaz totally explained
*Mannaz or
*Manwaz (ᛗ) is the
Proto-Germanic term for "
man", in the gender-neutral sense of "individual, human being" and is also the reconstructed name of the
m-
rune . It also implies the links between the Self and Mankind, Relationships, as well as the emphasis on teamwork, and bonding with others.
Younger Futhark ᛘ is
maðr ("
man"). It took up the shape of the
algiz rune ᛉ, replacing
Old Futhark ᛗ
mannaz.
The rune is recorded in all three
rune poems, in the Norwegian and Icelandic poems as
maðr, and in the Anglo-Saxon poem as
man.
| Rune Poem: |
English Translation: |
Old Norwegian
Maðr er moldar auki;
mikil er græip á hauki.
|
Man is an augmentation of the dust;
great is the claw of the hawk.
|
Old Icelandic
Maðr er manns gaman
ok moldar auki
ok skipa skreytir.
homo mildingr.
|
Man is delight of man
and augmentation of the earth
and adorner of ships.
|
Anglo-Saxon
Man byþ on myrgþe his magan leof:
sceal þeah anra gehwylc oðrum swican,
forðum drihten wyle dome sine
þæt earme flæsc eorþan betæcan.
|
The joyous man is dear to his kinsmen;
yet every man is doomed to fail his fellow,
since the Lord by his decree will commit the vile carrion to the earth.
|
Etymology
The word developed into
Old English man, mann "human being" (cf. also
German Mann,
Old Norse maðr,
Gothic manna "man").
It is derived from a
Proto-Indo-European base
*man-, with a variant
*mon- (cf.
Sanskrit/
Avestan manu-,
Russian muzh "man, male"). Some etymologies treat the root as an independent one, as does the
American Heritage Dictionary.
*Manus in
Indo-European mythology was the first man, see
Mannus,
Manu (Hinduism)
Of the etymologies that do make connections with other Indo-European roots, man "the thinker" is the most traditional — that is, the word is connected with the root
*men- "to think" (
cognate to
mind). This etymology presumes that man is the one who thinks, which fits the definition of man given by
René Descartes as a "rational animal", indebted to
Aristotle's ζώον λόγoν ἒχων, which is also the basis for
Homo sapiens (see
Human self-reflection). This etymology is however not generally accepted. In Finnish, which isn't a
Germanic language, there's a possible analogy of this etymology. In Finnish, "human" is "ihminen", which means somebody that's wondering.
A second etymology postulates the reduction of the ancestor of "human" to the ancestor of "man". Human is from *dhghem-, "earth". *(dh)ghom-on- is some sort of “earthling” . The word would reduce to just its final syllable, *m-on-. You may find this point of view in
Eric Partridge,
Origins, under
man. Such a derivation might be credible if we'd only the Germanic form (also note that
Tuisto, father of
Mannus, is the god who sprang from the earth), but the attested Indo-Iranian
manu virtually excludes the possibility.
Restricted use of
man in the sense "
adult male" only began to occur in late Old English, around the 11th century, and the word formerly expressing male sex,
wer had died out by AD 1300 (but survives in for example
were-ald,
were-wolf and
were-gild). The original sense of the word is preserved in words such as
mankind, from Old English
mancynn.
In the twentieth century, the generic meaning of "man" declined still further (but survives in compounds "mankind", "everyman", "no-man", etc), and is now mostly seen as archaic, with the word used almost exclusively to mean "adult male". Interestingly, exactly the same thing has happened to the Latin word
homo: in most
Romance languages,
homme,
uomo,
hombre,
homem have come to refer mainly to males, with residual generic meaning.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Mannaz'.
|
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