Did you know that human means “of the earth”? Yep!
The word traces its roots most immediately back to Latin, in which humanus had the same meaning it does today: “pertaining to man.” (Human entered English in the mid-1400s with that same meaning.) But the word also implies those things we add an -e to the word for (humane): “learned, refined, civilized, philanthropic.”
But in the case of this word, even the Latin has roots that go further back, all the way to the first recorded languages, that give us (dh)ghomon — literally “of the earth, earth-being,” in opposition to the gods, who are of the heavens. We see a similar relationship in the Hebrew between adam (“man”) and adamah (“earth”).
Human rights has been a phrase since 1650; human being since about 1670. Human interests is from 1779, and human resources is from 1907–though at the time, it was used by Christians in the same way we use natural resources. Using it for the name of a personnel management division didn’t follow until the late 1970s.
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
