What would be a politically correct term for "hominid"?

Question

Aliens that look somewhat like humans probably wouldn't refer to themselves as humanoid or anthropoid. Is there a more generic term for beings who are bipedal, bimanual, and have a roughly human-like body and face shape? Assume no common ancestor with humans and no consensus among the population that they were created in the image of a deity.

Edit: In this scenario, thousands of sentient species exist in a community where it is known that many, but not all, are humanoid. Additionally, humans have been found on three separate planets. Taking available data into account, scientific discussion offers various explanations for why this has occurred. The existence of similar life forms on various worlds provides a mystery that scientists in this community are trying to unravel. In a universe that has developed differently from ours, even given the same data we have on Earth, it is not likely that communities would develop the same scientific constructs that we have. Convergent evolution is an option, but it may not be the best one here.

Because the community is not an anthropocentric one, respectful classification of species would involve a term that might be different in each language. Translation devices allow members of different species to understand each other, and those that do not have them installed typically speak a trade language. Because the story is written in English, I need an English translation of that term.

Answer 1

Have your characters discuss the problem in-story, and perhaps move to a more neutral term to satisfy their universe's equivalent of political correctness.

In James White's Sector General series, in which a vast variety of species needed treatment at the hospital of the title, each broad type of species had a classification in a four letter alphabetical system. (I've just learned from Wikipedia that White took this idea from E.E. Smith's Lensman series.) In White's system humans and similar species were DBDG. Wikipedia has a list of all the species that turn up in the stories with their classifications here. I forget exactly what each letter meant, but they covered things such as what gas or liquid they breathed, how many legs and arms, what was their dominant sense and so on.

It's discussed in-story that all species' own terms for themselves can be translated into English as "human", and presumably that extends to each species' own equivalent for "humanoid". Hence the more objective alphabetical code. We must assume that the other species were also using their own equivalents to the letters of the Latin alphabet.

Answer 2

There's a reason we refer to things that look roughly like us as "humanoids", it's because we use ourselves as a basis of comparison. Your aliens probably use a comparable word based around their own name to refer to themselves and us by shape.

When you refer to general shape, I see no reason to think that "humanoid" or whatever term the aliens use for it to be "politically incorrect" any more than it is politically incorrect to refer to their appendages as "arms", it's just the english word for the thing you speak of.

If you want a word that doesn't refer to their shape but their ability to think or want to group them and humans in a way that excludes other things carrying the basic shape, consider using "sentients" or something of the such as a grouping word based around the concept of high intelligence.

Answer 3

TL;DR;

'oid'
1. a suffix meaning “resembling,” “like,” used in the formation of adjectives and nouns (and often implying an incomplete or imperfect resemblance to what is indicated by the preceding element)

If the alien has bilateral symmetry, bipedal, with four limbs, and a head; it would be appropriate to use the term humanoid - meaning "human like" in appearance.

As for the political correctness of what to call thinking beings that are not human; I've always liked terms like "being", "sapient", "sentient", "citizen" (if they belong to the same political entity), etc.

As an exercise for the reader...

I'd like to elaborate on @LostinFrance 's answer by using a thought experiment.

Thought Experiment
Pick 5 of the most intelligent creatures living on Earth. For example, based upon EQ.

Encephalization quotient, or EQ, is a way to measure the brain's development in an animal (or, more properly, a vertebrate) species. It could be thought that mere brain size would be indicative of intelligence, but let's consider this list of 38 animal species, ordered by brain mass.

Some quick factoids about intelligence

As an average, herbivores (with the notable exception of the elephants) and insectivores stay under 1.0 EQ, while carnivores (especially cetaceans) and omnivores (especially primates) are above; social animals rank higher than solitary animals (dogs higher than cats, horses and lions higher than rats). Only a few species approach, reach or exceed 3 EQ, with both extinct and modern hominids at the very top.

--from the Speculative Evolution link above

So if terrestrial life is an indicator of life in general, we can expect the vast majority of alien intelligence to share these traits too. Carnivorous or Omnivorous social animals. An SF story may include solitary and/or herbivorous animals as exceptions to the standards.

The animals I'll pick:

1. Humans - EQ ~ 8.1
2. Bonobos - EQ ~ 5.9
3. Dolphins - EQ ~ 4.2
4. Crows - EQ ~ 4.1
5. Cuttlefish - EQ ~ 1.4 about a Husky's (dog) level of intelligence

2/5 of these animals (Humans & Bonobos) belong to the same

• Domain - Eukarya
• Kingdom - Animalia
• Phylum - Chordata
• Subphylum - Verbrata
• Class - Mammalia
• Order - Primates
• Family - Hominidae

With Cetaceans diverging from them at the Order (Order - Cetacea, Family - Delphinidae) level.

Crows are birds which are closely related to mammals and diverging from them at the Class (Class - Aves, Order - Passerifores, Family - Corvidae) level.

Only the cuttlefish are significantly different, diverging at the Phylum level - pretty high in our phylogenetic tree (Phylum - Mollusca, Subphylum - ??, Class - Cephalopoda, Order - Sepiida, Family - Sepiidae).

Nearly everything we think of as intelligent in this world is extremely closely related to each other from a phylogenetic and genealogical perspective. We have the same basic structure (bilateral symmetry based upon a quadrupedal layout), have nearly all the same organs, use the same proteins, enzymes, etc. Our surfaces are mostly similar (with hair and feathers interchangeable).

Even though it's different and really stands out as being different, it too descended from the same basic set of biochemistry as other intelligent life on Earth.

Now imagine an alien life form from a planet which uses a completely different biochemistry. Would it be even more different from all intelligent terrestrial life as cuttlefish are from humans?

SF Treatment
Most SF treatment of this problem is similar to Star Trek. Dress the alien up in a strange costume, give the actor some bumps on their forehead, and call them an alien. We go along with the gag for convenience but in reality if scientists discovered aliens like this - we'd have to assume we shared common ancestry and not all that long ago (10s of millions of years at the most).

Enter the Analogs

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
-- J. B. S. Haldane

and so alien life is likely to be.

Because I can't predict what alien life might be like, I'd use something I like to call "analogs". We can assume organisms about our size evolved to life on a planet with the gravity and atmosphere of our planet will have some things similar to us:

• Skinlike structure
• Skeletallike structure
• Respiratorysystem
• Circulatorysystem
• Digestivesystem
• Organs which perform the same functions ours do

Based upon a study of evolutionary biology, the plan form would be likely to possess bilateral symmetry (human like), radial symmetry, or segmented (worm / insect like) as these allows the same genes to be used repeatedly to make larger body size.

Viva la Difference!

• But the number and type of limbs could be any number from 0 - 100s.
• Their manipulators could be like ours or could be tongues, tails, antenna, mouth pieces, lips, teeth (analogs), etc.
• I think they'd be more likely to possess a central nervous system but this isn't necessarily so.
• Their sensory organs could detect everything we detect plus other stuff we can't (taste with their "feet", see into UV/IR, etc.).
• Their primary sense organ could be sound, scent, taste, feeling, etc. and wouldn't necessarily be vision.

Convergent evolution
It is possible (but probably uncommon) that aliens from different planets could evolve similar structures from completely different biochemistries. This has happened on Earth in which the eye was developed at least 5 different times by evolutions. Eye structures in most cases are coarsely identical but often have drastically different details (the octopus / squid eye is much better than our mammalian eye - their blood vessels don't interfere with their vision).

So you might find vaguely humanoid intelligent aliens out there. They might be bilaterally symmetric, bipedal quadruped layout, upper limbs devoted to manipulation, lower limbs devoted to locomotion, and possess a central nervous system concentrated in a lobe on the top of the body. That head might possess the bulk of the sensory organs.

But it wouldn't look human to us. The limb's joints would probably swing differently than ours. Their movement would look very strange to us.

In short, aliens would be very alien to us and until/unless we became familiar with them, being around them would make us feel very uneasy (and the reverse would probably be true too).

So what we call that wormy thing?
Ordinary humans, being the lazy and imprecise critters that we are, will probably use references to organisms we are more familiar with when naming alien species with common vernacular. So if an alien creature resembles reptiles to us, we will probably call them reptiloids (regardless of the details of their gross structure). The same goes for other gross physiological appearances. Expect exoskeletal aliens to be called insectoids, flying ones to be called avioids, swimming ones to be called fishoids (that just sounds wrong though), etc.

If writing fiction, you might point out that scientifically speaking the alien creature in question is really nothing like the referenced creature on Earth other than some external factor which lead to the comparison.

In Summary
I really like the ideas behind White's categorization scheme because it can accommodate most any plan form and alien physiology and any sort of classification would have to do this.

But for appearances, humanoid is appropriate and what to call other thinking entities, being or sentient would be appropriate.

Answer 4

It might require finer detail. What if they can use the same hand tools as us, but can't use the same chairs? What if they are humanoid by most definition but their hands are proportioned and sized differently enough that that can't use our everyday items like scissors, can openers, etc.

In a rich multi-species universe, scientists may have words for the reoccuring most-common patterns for body design, different words for metabolism, different again for which environments can be tolerated.

For mixed-species environments where they mingle and work together, there will be a mismash of practical terms that emerge as needed. When you make restaurant reservations, you need a table with 3 chairs for one anatomy, a high chair, a harness for a different anatomy, and a latter-like set of bars for another. If body plans reoccur in a small number of common designs, they will have names. But the major plan alone is not enough for compatibility needs.

Words for different types may be imports, so English and Japanese would indeed be likeky to supply the one for us, if the word was already in use to apply to our robots that can interoperate with our workspaces, in full or above the waist only.

Answer 5

Linguistically, there is not a problem with referring to another species as humanoid. In English, that's just what we call them. In French or Spanish or Russian, they'd use their own words. The aliens would perhaps refer to us as 'alienoid' or the '-oid' of their species' name.

Therefore, I see no political incorrectness with referring to the aliens as humanoid. If we're communicating with them and they don't like it, presumably they'll tell us; if we're not, what does it matter what we call them? They won't know.

Answer 6

This question may be better suited for the English Language Stack Exchange. The word you are looking for is humanoid, which means having an appearance generally resembling humans. It carries no implication of shared ancestry, although that's certainly possible (robots designed to resemble humans, or some form of interstellar genetic seeding).

Words that would be less applicable include "hominid" (the great apes), "hominoid" (apes), or "anthropoid" (simians), as those refer to families of Earth primates.

Answer 7

Depends on what language they speak, but I would suspect that we would have to invent a term that means "bipedal, bimanual and human-like" but without implying "human". Mashing those words together results in "Bipedman" or the equivalent in their language.

"Pentanoids" might also work. Human(oids) have 5 (= penta) main senses, 5 main protutions from their body (2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head), 5 fingers, etc. Pentanoids might not be the best name however. Any other descriptive name would also work. A name that referes to them as intelligent beings (also fine for non-humanoids) such as "sophonts" or "sentients" might also be approprate.

Names could be very arbitrary in this case. We would probably call them what ever they call themselves and vis versa.

Answer 8

The question you should ask is whether it's realistic in your universe for all those features to come together enough for that term to be useful. The majority of biped people might have six arms. The majority of people with two arms might have a snake like body. The majority of creatures with four limbs might rather crawl.

So I think there are two real possibilities:

If particular combinations are very common, then there might be a special name. 'Standard' configuration, or perhaps something named after the most numerous or the first encountered species with that configuration.

If not, then there wouldn't be a name for such a combination of features. Instead people would refer to specific features as required. "Can I get a biped chair, please? And set his display to 400-700nm?"

Answer 9

ANTROPOMORPHIC

Literally, "with the form of a man".

Of course, the word is, itself, antropocentric. But so is our language, for good measure (it has evolved to serve use).

"They", in their language, will probably use a "themcentric" term, so do not worry about that.

Additionally, when the common characteristic is not form but intelligence, you could use sapiens or sapients¹.

¹: With permissions from Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary.