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From: randall2@netcom.com (R.B Franklin)
Subject: Re: Query: Given names & sex
Message-ID: <randall2DvG2Gy.9tL@netcom.com>
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Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 05:41:21 GMT
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Avi Jacobson (avi_jaco@netvision.net.il) wrote:

: The _Germans_ (we're not 
: discussing Ancient Rome here, we're discussing events which took 
: place in my parents' generation and were perpetrated to a large 
: extent by persons still alive) invented the term "Aryan" to mean "pure 
: German", and constructed a whole codex of racist, discriminatory law 
: around it.  

[...]
: For someone who accused _me_ of being offensive to Germans by using a 
: term the Germans themselves invented [...]

Actually the Germans did not invent the word "Aryan".  The word actually 
refers to an ancient people.  If I'm not mistaken, both Ireland (Eire) and 
Iran both derive their names from them.  In fact my neighbor, who is Iranian, 
has named his son Aryan. (I don't think he is even aware of the word's 
racist connotations.)

It was Joseph-Arthur comte de Gobineau, a Frenchman, who first used the term 
"Aryan" to refer to the Nordic people as a superior race in his work 
"Essai sur l'inegalite des races humanines" in 1853.  

: Avi

R.B. Franklin
randall2@netcom.com
