List of alternative names for the human species

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

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

Some of these are ironic of the self-ascribed nobility immanent in the choice of sapiens, others are serious references to human universals that may be considered defining characteristics of the species. Most of these refer to linguistic, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, social or technological abilities taken to be unique to humanity.

The mixture of serious and tongue-in-cheek self-designation originates with Plato, who on one hand defined man as it were taxonomically as "featherless biped" and on the other as ζῷον πολιτικόν zōon politikon, as "political" or "state-building animal" (Aristotle's term, based on Plato's Statesman).

Harking back to Plato's zōon politikon 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 e.g. Carl von Linné 1760,Immanuel Kant 1798. Based on the same pattern is animal sociale or "social animal"animal laborans "laboring animal" (Hannah Arendt 1958) and animal symbolicum "symbolizing animal" (Ernst Cassirer 1944).

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