Howdy everyone. I’m currently writing a bit of historical fantasy, taking place in the early 1900’s on an Earth that includes elves, dwarves, and many others alongside humans. I came to a point where I was about to write humanity in a reference to all of them. I’ve considered using intelligent life, but that doesn’t flow very well for me. Any suggestions?
Oooo this could also crop up in my novel. I haven't thought about this specifically myself. I'm blanking on anything that could be done, but I will be watching this thread.
Is there any other overarching structure that connects them all? A kingdom or anything? citizens, subjects, inhabitants of ... mortals?
Are you looking for a made-up word? Otherwise: https://rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=humanity&typeofrhyme=syn&org1=syl&org2=l&org3=y
At the moment i’m using sapient life, which works well enough given that the story is centered around a scientific expedition. It fits what I need, and it’s not out of place for the characters thoughts. Weren’t all words made up at some point?
Good point, but I think you know what I mean. If you're just looking for an existing alternative, surely a good thesaurus is your best bet?
Civilization might work. There’s no one nation though. It’s pre-WW1 Earth with a few more sentient species than humans in the mix.
Words from the thesaurus that might work are people or society. The rest that mine has are like mankind, humankind, and other such human centric words.
'Intelligent life' doesn't work. Humanity isn't that intelligent. Since when is it intelligent to destroy the very thing you depend on for life in order to score imaginary points in a big economic game? Since when is it intelligent to conceive of, design and build weaponry that has the potential to completely ruin the earth? Since when is it intelligent to create the conditions from which world wars emerge? No, humans aren't that intelligent. They're delusional on a grand scale. And they need to wind their necks in big time.
If you happen to be the human which is doing it, then it's highly intelligent, reasoned and rational. "I can damage this environment just enough to give myself an advantage over other people, and the cumulative damage done by others won't affect me within my lifetime." Is it moral? No. Is it intelligent? Absolutely.
Not my best work, but how about Parlantes (Italian). Fantasy often defines species that are thought of as people by their ability to speak. I'd've gone directly for Latin, but I don't pretend to know the correct form of the word for number, gender, case, etc. The first one that comes up in Google Translate is loquentium. Random contextual example: "All parlantes are welcome in our city, in whichever manner is most suited to each."
I'm reminded of Little Fuzzy, where the rough test of "talk and light a fire" was used to judge whether newly discovered entities were sapient beings. I came to suggest the possibility of "souls", a least if the setting were more religious, but I like parlantes.
Oh, snap! CF reaches into the very back of Wreybies' memory closet. Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens just time-traveled me back to ringer tees, banana seats, and a youth spent reading old-school Sci-Fi.
Ooh, I love these kinds of questions. Is this word strictly used by the narrator? Because I have a hard time believing all the species would use the same word. Anyway I looked up cosmopolitanism and it led me to the word cosmopolis. The problem is, it refers to a city. You want the world, so my suggestion is something like unopolis universopolis multopolis I'm sure you can think of something better.
