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Loaded terms in free software

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 20:10 UTC (Wed) by gioele (subscriber, #61675)
In reply to: Loaded terms in free software by mb
Parent article: Loaded terms in free software

> That's racist, because it refers to people and because of the history of the word 'Mohr'.

The history of the work Mohr (moor) is a good example of how different languages and populations may see the same word in two completely different ways. Moor was in Latin and Gree a generic geographic adjective (coming from Mauritania, at the time equivalent with coming from North Africa). It then evolved to mean Arab person from North Africa (like Othello was). Finally, in all languages spoken in south and central Europe (Italian, Spanish, Germany), it further evolved to mean "dark tanned" or "with dark hair". Nowadays saying that somebody is "moro" (Italian) or "moreno" (Spanish) just indicate that their skin or their hair is dark, a judgment-neutral adjective like "swarthy" or "brunette".

However, in the 60s the German-speaking world started using the word "Mohr" with discriminatory intents and it is now treated similarly to "the N word" and rarely used.

Since I learned about this, I cannot stop asking myself: will one day German-speaking people ask Italian-speaking or Spanish-speaking people to stop using a word because in their language it is no longer acceptable?


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Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 23:02 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

What happens when we then throw the English word "moor" into the mix? Dunno the origin of the word, but it has nothing to do with either people or colour, being a remote upland often boggy or covered in heather.

(And I've always thought of Moor (as in a person) as being an archaic word for some one from Northern Africa especially Morocco.)

Cheers,
Wol

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 17, 2020 23:17 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

Merriam-Webster says* that the lowercase noun is of unrelated etymology:

- moor, meaning a bog or other infertile land, came from Old High German (muor) via Old English (mōr).
- moor, meaning to tie off a ship or boat, came from Middle English (moren), and is "akin to" Middle Dutch (meren, maren).
- Moor, meaning a person from North Africa, came from Latin (Maurus) via Anglo-French and Middle English (More). It originally referred to Mauretania.**

TL;DR: When in doubt, blame the French.

* https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moor
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauretania


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