# Origin of the word "caucasian" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 30, 2004, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800 "2004-01-30T19:11:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/1 "2004-01-30T19:11:56Z")
Anybody got the straight dope on the word “caucasian”? ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/2 "2004-01-30T19:46:55Z")
I assume you mean ‘as a synonym for white/European people’? It comes from J.F. Blumenbach, whose seminal work in anthropology established the notion of different races of humans. He divided the species into 4 (later 5) different races - Caucasian, Ethiopian, American, Mongolian, and Malayan. (He was wrong, of course. Stephen Jay Gould’s _The Mismeasure of Man_ is a good book on that topic.) The reason for choosing the Caucasus is that he thought Georgian girls were hot. Actually, Georgian skulls I guess. He believed that humans had spread over the world from one common point, and apparently thought that the most beautiful physical characteristics (white folks, to him) should be the first. Despite the fact that he believed that non-white races were ‘degraded’ from the Caucasian, this was only a physical distinction for him; aside from aesthetics, he was not a racist. ---
**Author:** ![yellowcakesolid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cdc98d/32.png) [@yellowcakesolid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowcakesolid)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/3 "2004-01-30T19:47:34Z")
I’m getting this from [ScienceDaily.com](http://ScienceDaily.com): In physical anthropology, Caucasian is a purported race that includes most of the natives of Europe, West Asia, North Africa, and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. This category was first proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who coined the term in his treatise “On the Natural Varieties of Mankind” in 1775. His studies based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by the inhabitants of Georgia in the Caucasus mountains. Unfortunately, you sort of had to know to put “skull” in your Google search. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/4 "2004-01-30T19:52:18Z")
A voter in Iowa? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/5 "2004-01-30T21:14:48Z")
My reading of a few other sources would indicate that Blumenbach didn’t use the term in his first(1775) edition(his doctoral dissertation) , nor in the second edition(1781). He did a third edition(1795) in which he finally came up with a word, but I don’t think it was “caucasian.” It might be ‘Caucasoid’ or some such, but I’d love to see the actual word. The OED and other sources first cite the actual term “caucasian” from 1807. ---
**Author:** ![monica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a183cd/32.png) [@monica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monica)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2004, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/6 "2004-01-31T03:26:22Z")
I’d always heard that the word described people living west of the Caucus Mountains. ---
**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:** [January 31, 2004, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/7 "2004-01-31T05:58:55Z")
Some answers in Dex’s Straight Dope Staff Report [Why do we say “Caucasian” to mean a person of European ancestry?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcaucasian.html) I came across this quote from Blumenbach a few months ago in a book by Leon Poliakov (probably _The Aryan Myth_) > [@](#): > > I gave to that variety the name of the Caucasian Mountains because it is in that region that the finest race of man is to be found, the Georgian race, and if it were possible to assign a birth place to the human race, all physiological reasons would combine to indicate that place. > > Blumenbach, _De L’unité Du Genre Humain_ Obviously the quotation as above is a translation. As far as I can tell, _De L’unité Du Genre Humain_ was first published in 1803. ---
**Author:** ![Bromley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@Bromley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bromley)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2004, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/8 "2004-01-31T08:29:08Z")
Minor hijack. I’ve always associated the Caucasian “race” with the Indo-European language group, although that’s only been because I thought that they both originated somewhere around the Caucasuses. Is there _any_ validity to that? All that fitted in quite nicely for me (an atheist) with a program I saw that placed Eden in the same area (although they didn’t try to make anything out of it’s location). Please don’t destroy all my tenuous links here 😃 . ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2004, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/9 "2004-01-31T11:10:46Z")
> [@monica](#): > > I’d always heard that the word described people living west of the Caucus Mountains. A good deal of Africa is west of the Caucasus. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2004, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-the-word-caucasian/226800/10 "2004-01-31T11:12:35Z")
> [@Bromley](#): > > Minor hijack. I’ve always associated the Caucasian “race” with the Indo-European language group, although that’s only been because I thought that they both originated somewhere around the Caucasuses. Is there _any_ validity to that? > > All that fitted in quite nicely for me (an atheist) with a program I saw that placed Eden in the same area (although they didn’t try to make anything out of it’s location). Please don’t destroy all my tenuous links here 😃 . \ I’ve seen a few shows on the possible locations of the Garden and I believe the general consensus is that Bahrain fit the bill best. (It wasn’t always just desert, but was at one time rather lush and verdant \