Japhethitic?

[Taliesin]

It just struck me as an idle curiosity to wonder what this word should be. We have Semitic and Hamitic from Shem and Ham, referring to the peoples of the Middle East and Africa who are supposedly descended from them. Japheth's progeny were the inhabitants of the lands around the Mediterranean, and I'm assuming that is to include the Nordic types as well. So what is the word for the white- and olive-skinned people of Europe?

I consulted my Oxford Dictionary, of course, but could not find such a word. I assume it would resemble Japhethitic in some way. The other possibility is that since it refers to "us", we don't have a word for it.

Thanks for indulging a bored Saxon-Celt.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Nice thought, but such a word would be better applied to thoseJapanese people who are not very motivated.

 

[jonatas]

So what is the word for the white- and olive-skinned people of Europe?

i don't know for sure... but there is a strong historical semitic influence, whether its origins are jewish, arabic or phoenician, for example, throughout the entire med area.... Portugal, for example, has an extremely strong Jewish influence, not to mention the historical presence of other semitic peoples, like Arabs and Phoenicians which have melted into the general populace over thousands of years...... also, i wonder how much of a role caucasians played from the perspective of the Old Testament (my impression is that the OT is far more "semitic" than the NT), maybe that's why there isn't a specific word derived from Japheth... or maybe there is an appropriate word which i just can't recall right now...

 

[Taliesin]

A Google search for it turns up a scant few websites that refer to Indo-European (the language or the culture) as Japhethitic. It doesn't seem to be in current use, however.

 

[jonatas]

no it certainly isn't part of common usage

 

[Birdjaguar]

III. Caucasoid or Europid Subspecies
A.Mediterranid race
1. West Mediterranean or Iberid subrace (Spain, Portugal, Corsica, Sardinia, and coastal areas of Morocco and Tunisia; the Atlanto-Mediterranean peoples who expanded over much of the Atlantic coastal regions of Europe during the Mesolithic period were a branch of this subrace)
2. East Mediterranean or Pontid subrace (Black Sea coast of Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria; Aegean coasts of Greece and Turkey)
3. Dinaricized Mediterraneans (Residual mixed types resulting from the blending of Mediterranids with Dinarics, Alpines or Armenids; not a unified type, has much regional variation; predominant element [over 60%] in Sicily and southern Italy, principal element in Turkey [35%], important element in western Syria, Lebanon and central Italy, common in northern Italy. The ancient Cappadocian Mediterranean subrace of Anatolia was dinaricized during the Bronze Age [second millennium B.C.] and is a major contributor to this type in modern Turkey.)
4. South Mediterranean or Saharid subrace (predominant in Algeria and Libya, important in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt)
5. Orientalid or Arabid subrace (predominant in Arabia, major element from Egypt to Syria, primary in northern Sudan, important in Iraq, predominant element among the Oriental Jews)

B. Dinaric race (predominant in western Balkans [Dinaric Mountains] and northern Italy, important in the Czech Republic, eastern and southern Switzerland, western Austria and eastern Ukraine)

C. Alpine race (predominant element in Luxembourg, primary in Bavaria and Bohemia, important in France, Hungary, eastern and southern Switzerland)

D. Ladogan race (named after Lake Ladoga; indigenous to Russia; includes Lappish subrace of arctic Europe)

E. Nordish or Northern European race (various subraces in the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Belgium; predominant element in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Finland and the Baltic States; majority in Austria and Russia; minority in France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary; outlined in detail in The Nordish Race)

F. Armenid race (predominant element in Armenia, common in Syria, Lebanon and northern Iraq, primary element among the Ashkenazic Jews)

G. Turanid race (partially hybridized with Mongoloids; predominant element in Kazakhstan.; common in Hungary and Turkey)

H. Irano-Afghan race (predominant in Iran and Afghanistan, primary element in Iraq, common [25%] in Turkey)

I. Indic or Nordindid race (Pakistan and northern India)

J. Dravidic race (India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka [Ceylon]; ancient stabilized Indic-Veddoid [Australoid] blend)

From here:
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes...umanRaces/RacesofHumanity/RacesofHumanity.htm

 

[HamaticBabylon]

Japheth, the third son of Noah, are the people of the regions of northern Mongolia and Siberia, there are, as medical facts show, a mutation of the black man...because at the time they resembled something albino like.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The term "Hamitic" isn't much used in scholarly contexts either, these days.

Japhethitic is pretty much a "wastebasket taxon", and so isn't of any particular use.

 

[Verbose]

It's part of 18th c. linguistics. The bible was still a major point of reference. German scholars in Göttingen (Michaelis and Schlözer) made up the label "semitic", which is just about the only thing from this period that has stuck.

Then William Jones came up with the idea that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin had a common ancestor and formed part of the same family of languages. But what to call it:
Indo-celtic, indo-german, indo-european, aryan, iranian, and yes, japhetitic, were all employed at some point.

Most of 19th c. linguistics, history of religion, anthropology, archaeology and racial science tended to agree on the labels Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian (waste category including Sami, Basques, Etruscans, Finns, Hungarians, Sumerians, Turks, Samoyeds etc.)

This changed in the last decades of the 19th c., when especially the racial scientists wanted to be rid of "the tyranny of linguistics" (Paul Broca). Instead after much quarrel they pretty much settled on Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric etc.

None of these have been much in use since 1945 either.

 

[punkbass2000]

Nice thought, but such a word would be better applied to thoseJapanese people who are not very motivated.

Quit reading my mind!