Jtdcftul

(Yes, this is an English word, but it's roots go through Latin and Greek, and so the question here. Hopefully that's OK. This intro can be deleted if a moderator agrees.).

In the last International Women's Day I saw some footage showing a poster with the phrase "women making herstory", as opposed to "history". The phrase was playing with the fact that the word "history" can be decomposed as "his+story", suggesting a male tone. I wonder whether the origin of the word does includes this gendered tone. According to wiktionary, "history" comes from the Ancient Greek "ἱστορία", which is a female noun (is there a relation between noun of word and cultural gender of the word?). Now, ἱστορία comes from another Greek word, "ῐ̔́στωρ", which, in turns comes from PIE. "ῐ̔́στωρ" is a male noun, perhaps because, since it means judge, culturally judges were men (so notice the change from male to female in history)

Now, I know nothing of Greek, let alone of linguistics, so I'm not sure how to interpret the above to answer my question. It seems, the answer is "no, there is no male tone in the word history". In fact, as said, the word itself is feminine in both Latin and Greek. Any ideas?

PS: related but unhelpful post here.

While I'm sure a better-research answer might be able to give you more insight, perhaps a simple response will be a good place to start.

As you found, "history" comes from Greek ἱστορία (historia) via Latin historia. A "ἱστορία" generically means an "inquiry," and that is the sense that Herodotus intends in the famous opening lines of his Histories:

Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε...

Godley's translation:

This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus...

So:

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  Does English "history" come from "his story"? No. "Story" comes from the same Greek word, but the "hi" is completely unrelated to the masculine pronoun.


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  Does "historia" have a female connotation? No. Except in certain obvious cases, grammatical gender has nothing to do with male and female "in the real world." It's as silly (and wrong) to think that "virtus" or "ἀρετή" (virtue/excellence) are somehow "female-associated" or that "μαστός" (breast) is somehow "male-associated."


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  Are there problems with sexism in history? Yes. But let's not try to fix that by appealing to a spurious etymology.

'Herstory' is not much more than a nonce-word. It's the sort of thing that used to be quoted by feminists in order to demonstrate how wrongfully the world, even the English language, had been arranged to ensure that men would rule it. As @brianpck suggests, it's quite wrong to look for any other etymological explanation.

Over the years, other words have been suggested with similar intent. You can see the sort of thing in the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Manchester should become 'Personchester', which was in its turn corrected by some to 'Perchildchester' or 'Perkidchester'. Sadly enough, it all went to trivialise what was, in fact, a serious call for reform in an important aspect of British society, one that is still being addressed.