SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 221 



social group of which they are members. It is the 

 first question to be answered, and at that early stage 

 the answer is only to be obtained by reference to the 

 primary sexual characters. "It is a son, a seed-giver," 

 says the primitive midwife, or "It is a daughter, a 

 suckler," as the case may be. 



In Sanskrit the root su denoted primitively pour 

 out, wet, squeeze out juice, as in savam, water, and 

 silnas, river. But it has, in addition, the sense of 

 beget, procreate, whence we have sunus, the son, the 

 begetter. The co-radicates are Gothic sunus, O.H.G-. 

 sunn, A.S. sunn, O.N. sonr, English son, German sohn, 

 and probably Greek wo? for crwo?. Some writers have 

 held that the su in sunus denoting procreate, the son 

 is the procreated. Against this must be remarked the 

 almost universal use of the word for the male offspring. 

 Sanskrit sutd, daughter, appears to come from a past 

 participle, and so to mean the procreated. The siinus 

 series is, however, to be connected with a present parti- 

 ciple sunvant, procreating. 1 The same root occurs in 

 other words, one or two of which are sufficiently sugges- 

 tive for our present purpose to be mentioned. Thus San- 

 skrit sfitu, pregnancy, Old Irish suth, the fetus, Greek 

 o-O? ({5? in Homer), a hog or wild boar, Latin sus, O.H.G. 

 su, O.N. syr, Modern German sau, English sow, where 

 there appears to be a transition first to either male or 

 female, and then to the female only. The procreative 

 capacity of the pig is obviously the source of the name, 

 the animal itself from Scandinavia to Greece being a 



1 That son and daughter originally stood for boy and girl simply, and not 

 for a relationship, is in keeping with the Celtic tongues, which have no name 

 for son and daughter as distinguished from boy and girl. 



