The term "Caucasian"

[milesscotch]

I want to find the origin and meaning of the term Caucasian. Now, I know that it means, loosely, “white people” and it comes from the Caucasus mountains in SE Europe (or SW Asia, depending on to whom you talk). I’d like to find out how the Caucasus got its name, or what that means. I once read that it comes from something that means “beautiful people” and made that claim to a friend. This friend called me on it and I have been unable to relocate the original source.

[yabob]

Your memory is close to correct - it doesn’t MEAN that, but there is a relation.

The originator was Johann Blumenbach, 18th century anthropologist, who coined the term “race” and divided humans into five categories:

http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1247.html

Physician, anthropologist, naturalist, physiologist, historian and bibliographer, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach is generally regarded as the founder of physical and scientific anthropology. He first used the word ”race” in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term “Caucasian” because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced “the most beautiful race of men”. Both Carl von Linné (1707-1778) and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories. Blumenbach was also one of the founders of comparative anatomy and the first to lecture on the topic.

[yabob]

I should be more precise. He probably didn’t “coin” the term “race”. He was the first to apply it as an anthropoligical categorization, rather than using it in a loose, informal sense.

[Keeve]

Thanks, yabob! All these years I was wondering if some anthropologist thought that all white people are descended from some tribe in those mountains. Comparing to the names of those other four “races”, I understand that Blumenbach took the name of an area as representative of all the areas where that “race” lives.