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alternatives to "demihuman" phrases.

A

A Pineapple

Scribe
I dislike the assumption in many fantasy settings that humans are "the" race and all other races are just modifications (elves are humans + pointy ears, centaurs are humans + horse body, mermaids, lamia, harpy, etc. are all mixes of humans). Even without including hybrid-type races, there is a tendency to lump elves, fairies, beastkin, dwarves and the like as merely demihumans. Since demihumans directly translates as either half human or inferior human, it would make sense that the other races would not be fond of the phrase as essentially a slur, but what other alternatives are there? "Other races" and "non-human races" sound clumsy, but because race discrimination will play a role in the story line, I am needing a phrase that is an alternative to races-other-than-human.

For reference, the intended races in my story are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Beastkin, Draconids (lizardmen), Garuda (avian bipeds), and Demons. Bonus points for suggestions that the races could use to refer to the outside races - non-elves, non-demons, etc.

Edit: I am a bit loath to go with mortal races as there is a component of apotheosis whereby individuals from any race can become immortal.
 
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Queshire

Queshire

Istar
I just lumped them all together as Mortal Races. Humans are just another example of one of the Mortal Races and isn't special in its own right.
 
skip.knox

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I just call people, people. Elves, dwarves, ogres, humans, all of them are called people and call each other people. Sometimes they speak of nations.

You say race discrimination plays a role in your world, but that clearly leads to demi-human or even half-human or non-human, precisely because you would want terms that were slurs (I'm sure you can come up with worse). It may be that you are looking specifically for a term that an omniscient narrator might use, letting in-story characters be the ones perpetrating slander.

To be clear an elf would not be demi or half, unless they were in fact of mixed genetics. They and the others could only be non-human.
 
A

A Pineapple

Scribe
skip.knox said:
I just call people, people. Elves, dwarves, ogres, humans, all of them are called people and call each other people. Sometimes they speak of nations.

You say race discrimination plays a role in your world, but that clearly leads to demi-human or even half-human or non-human, precisely because you would want terms that were slurs (I'm sure you can come up with worse). It may be that you are looking specifically for a term that an omniscient narrator might use, letting in-story characters be the ones perpetrating slander.

To be clear an elf would not be demi or half, unless they were in fact of mixed genetics. They and the others could only be non-human.
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I've been going through a good bit of manga/light novels lately and non-human races (including elves) are consistently grouped together as demihumans. Most literary universes (of that style) gloss over it, but several imply that demihuman is a derogatory term meaning less-than-human. They just don't actually fill in a substitute.

In the story I am aiming for the MC's travel a lot and fleeing/ helping others to flee from a discriminatory government will be a major plot point. The government will certainly brand non-humans as demihuman, but I want the MC's to have a different term.
 
Ban

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
I use the term sophonts for beings that are both sapient and sentient to a degree equivalent to humans. The first time I saw that term used was on the collaborative worldbuilding project "Orion's Arm", but "sophont" has existed since 1966 according to our colleagues at Scifi Stack Exchange. Plenty of mileage on the term in other words.
 
Finchbearer

Finchbearer

Istar
I think I have just said ‘not mortal’ from the perspective of the characters. I was musing on whether to use the term ‘English’ for a hobgoblin to describe humans, but that is very context specific. Most of my stories are from the perspective of humans though, but this has given me food for thought.
 
pmmg

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Well...first of all, I am not going to have guilt that a fictional race might be slighted by such a term.

A term like demi-human comes probably from two connections. One being the perspective of the characters whose lens we see the story through. A human seeing a centaur is more likely to see it as half human/half horse. But a horse seeing such a creature, might just see mostly a horse. The other being that the qualities of the mixing are in fact all human. A mermaid, a centaur, a satyr, these are all human things mixed with something else. If they were mixes with elves instead, such that a centaur was half elf/half horse, it might get known as a demi-elf.

Creatures like half-elves and half-orcs, are they called demi-humans? These would not likely be considered lesser humans, more so than lesser elves and lesser orcs. How do the elves view a half elf? Might they not think greater than human but lesser than elves?

I don't think the connotation is one to wrestle with. It is more something that ought to spawn from the perspective of the POV's in the story, and the attitudes of various cultures.

That we have a terminology that is human focused is clearly because humans are the only species of this type that actually exists to write them into stories, and so most things are in their/our perspective.

Whatever term the MC in your story comes up with, will likely be a contrived term invented to avoid the more culturally acknowledged one. Probably the best show of respect is to call them by their race and not the generic term. Hail and well met, centaur, instead of hail and well met, demihuman. I think what I might do is figure out the term from the perspective of the one who does not like it, and what they may wish to be called instead. So, if there is a half fox/half human, what would the half fox want to call themselves, and then have those who respect it call them that.

How about just the 'many races' and not the mortal ones? (Though, personally, if the context is between mortal and not mortal, it would seem the right term).
 
Michael Ehrler

Michael Ehrler

Scribe
I use different species of humans in the setting I'm working in currently. More like the genetic relation between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals than having completely different high fantasy races.
 
Diana Silver

Diana Silver

Sage
What race is your main character? It might be nice to play on their specific perspective. For instance if they were an Orc: how do the Orcs see all the other races that populate their world? As demi-orcs perhaps?
 
L

LostName

Dreamer
My fantasy meta setting is kind of a spin-off from my distant future hard sci fi setting (as hard as you can actually be when it's all Clarketech) and the entire fantasy meta setting is based on that sci fi setting.

So in the first place all "demi"-humans are actually humans since they are based on humans who could alter their genes on the fly and e.g. have cat ears and demon horns or bird wings and hooves or change back to base human easily and the actual nonhuman species (not races in this case, not like they have any common ancestors) are aliens, e.g. bioluminescent trees or a three headed, double torso seal like species or other stuff that is not even humanoid.

Though, I use them sparingly because so far I haven't really thought too much into the population demographics of my worlds. TBH most of my ideas do use pan-humans as main characters with sometimes other species also being in that world because I just don't really have many ideas about using them as major characters.
Then again, I focus heavily on world and not character building and in quite a few cases characters I thought up are still mostly blank slates and can be just about anything if I care to flesh them out.
 
JBCrowson

JBCrowson

Maester
Queshire said:
I just lumped them all together as Mortal Races. Humans are just another example of one of the Mortal Races and isn't special in its own right.
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I do the same.

I'd observe that human groups tend to fix on (often small) things by which they differ from each other, and on the basis of those differences claim a hierarchy. So i'd bet that if there were other races like elves etc, that humans would claim superiority unless it was very clear we were less powerful (in which case we'd try and figure out a way to get rid of them, deify them or both).
 
dollyt8

dollyt8

Sage
Not sure if this is helpful, but xenophobia is the fear or dislike of things that are perceived as alien or strange. Xenos refers to stranger or guest in Greek, and phobia is of course fear. So to play around with the Greek root, I would probably use some variation of xenos or just xenos itself for races to refer to groups outside of their race.
 
Gurkhal

Gurkhal

Auror
Purge the Xenos!

As mentioned the word Xenos is very heavily used in 40k and is normally found in the context of humans hating them and encouraging their violent deaths. And yes, Xenos is a term, as I understand it, for intelligent extraterrestial life in that setting and used by humans.

warhammer40k.fandom.com

Xenos

"Fear The Alien. Hate The Alien. Kill The Alien." — The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer (Damocles Gulf Edition) Xenos (pronounced ZEE-nahs or zehn-AHS) is a High Gothic term used by the people and adepta of the Imperium of Man that means "stranger" and "alien." It is often used by the...
warhammer40k.fandom.com warhammer40k.fandom.com

You can absolutely use the term but it might be helpful to know how it has already been used in a well known science fantasy setting.
 
Queshire

Queshire

Istar
Which conveniently ensures that the human factions always have an excuse to fight any of the alien factions. (A useful thing when you're a wargame and need to ensure that any combination of forces makes sense fighting each other.)
 
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