# Etymology of the name Neander **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 16, 2019, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858 "2019-10-16T18:05:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/1 "2019-10-16T18:05:54Z")
According to Wikipedia the name of the man the Neander valley was named after is derived from the German name Neuman(n). This seems a bit too coincidental. Is this true? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/2 "2019-10-16T18:25:27Z")
Well neo is greek for new and andro is greek for man so if someone wanted to calque Neumann into greek, Neander seems about right. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/3 "2019-10-16T18:56:14Z")
The valley was named for poet and hymn writer [Joachim Neander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Neander), who found inspiration there in the 17th century. An ancestor had Hellenized the name from Neumann. Both names, of course, mean “new man”. Everything I’ve read suggests the valley was called Neanderthal (-tal in modern spelling) before the human fossils were discovered there in 1856. So yes, it was a coincidence that a new species or subspecies of man was discovered there. In a world with a lot of facts, you have to occasionally expect the unexpected coincidence between some of them. If there are, say, one million facts about the known universe, then there are almost half a trillion unique pairs of facts. Most such pairs are completely unremarkable: (1) the sky is blue and (2) Mozart died at the age of 35. Or (1) Germany is a country in Europe and (2) It takes light eight minutes to reach the earth from the sun. Big deal. But half a trillion pairs is an inconceivably huge number. Even a one-in-a-million type coincidence should occur between the two facts in a pair about 500,000 times (half a trillion divided by a million). That includes coincidences like (1) a new kind of man was discovered in a place called Neandertal and (2) Neandertal means “new man valley”. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/4 "2019-10-16T19:46:38Z")
So…Andro, Andrew, Andrea’, Andy=Man. Good to know. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/5 "2019-10-16T22:51:35Z")
But they didn’t find a new man, they found an old one. And originally, people believed it was not a human fossil at all, or that it was a modern man with a bone disease. Reading “new man” into the discovery is modern retrofitting of history onto the contemporary facts. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/6 "2019-10-16T22:58:50Z")
I think Exapno is right. It was a new discovery, but all discoveries are new, so that alone would not tend to motivate deliberate inclusion of “new” into a name. If deliberate, it would generally indicate some aspect by comparison to something similar but older. So it weakens how remarkable the coincidence really is, it’s just the “ander” part. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/7 "2019-10-17T01:00:04Z")
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neandertal_(valley)): > [@](#): > > During the 19th century the valley was called Neandershöhle (Neander’s Cave) and after 1850, Neanderthal. It was named after Joachim Neander, a 17th-century German pastor [who] lived in nearby Düsseldorf and loved the valley for giving him the inspiration for his compositions. **Former names of the gorge were Das Gesteins (The Boulders) and Das Hundsklipp (Cliff of dogs, perhaps in the sense of “Cliff of Beasts”).** Had the remains been found earlier, would we now speak of Gersteintal (Boulder) Man, or DogMan or BeastMan? [/me ducks for cover] [or covers for ducks] ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/8 "2019-10-17T01:11:14Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neandertal_(valley)): > > Had the remains been found earlier, would we now speak of Gersteintal (Boulder) Man, or DogMan or BeastMan? > [/me ducks for cover] [or covers for ducks] Or Cliff? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/9 "2019-10-17T01:38:50Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > Had the remains been found earlier, would we now speak of Gersteintal (Boulder) Man, or DogMan or BeastMan? > [/me ducks for cover] [or covers for ducks] Given the name Neander, perhaps it should be ManMan. Or was that a man who was bitten by a radioactive man and gained the special powers of a man? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/10 "2019-10-17T03:31:13Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Given the name Neander, perhaps it should be ManMan. Or was that a man who was bitten by a radioactive man and gained the special powers of a man? Sexual harassment? ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/11 "2019-10-17T03:35:30Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > **[1]** Given the name Neander, perhaps it should be ManMan. **[2]** Or was that a man who was bitten by a radioactive man and gained the special powers of a man? **[1]** That would be NewManMan. Beware if it goes recursive. **[2]** That would be NukeMan. Obviously linked to RepoMan. > [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](#): > > Or Cliff? You win! ---
**Author:** ![EdelweissPirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@EdelweissPirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdelweissPirate)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/12 "2019-10-17T05:32:09Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Well neo is greek for new and andro is greek for man so if someone wanted to calque Neumann into greek, Neander seems about right. Well, that depends on what we mean by “man.” “[Andro” means an adult male person, but the sense of “mankind” swaps the delta for a theta](http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/efts/dicos/woodhouse_test.pl?keyword=%5EMan,%20subs.), putting the “anthro” in “anthropology.” I don’t think the Neanderthal coincidence is as on-the-nose as it may seem. ---
**Author:** ![Crossbreed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@Crossbreed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crossbreed)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/13 "2019-10-17T07:18:16Z")
Even though “andro” is male-specific, it is still used for unisex at times, as in the case of “android.” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/14 "2019-10-17T07:24:12Z")
But that was not coined in Greek; the person who coined it may simply have not understood the difference. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/15 "2019-10-17T07:42:40Z")
How about ‘androgenous’? ---
**Author:** ![Crossbreed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@Crossbreed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crossbreed)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/16 "2019-10-17T07:44:45Z")
Okay, but _andrias_ \< ανδριάντας is “statue” in the Greek, regardless of gender. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/17 "2019-10-17T10:28:09Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > How about ‘androgenous’? Same point as before. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/18 "2019-10-17T11:00:10Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > How about ‘androgenous’? Assuming this is a word you’ve derived meaning “of or related to androgens”, then yes, that definitely comes from ἀνδρο- (andro-, meaning “male human”) and not ἀνθρωπο- (anthropo-, meaning “human”). But I think that concept is more usually lexicalized as “androgenic”. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymology-of-the-name-neander/841858/19 "2019-10-17T11:34:06Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > How about ‘androgenous’? > [@psychonaut](#): > > Assuming this is a word you’ve derived meaning “of or related to androgens”… I assume you’re joking psychonaut, but I took it as a typo for androgynous. In which context the andro- part does obviously mean specifically male.