Gay Word Origins

The ancient Greeks were very accepting towards the idea of same sex love and that's how we got the expression, 'Greek love' to denote an affair between two men.

Lesbos (or Mytilini) is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea that today has a population of 90,000. The Gods of the island that the ancient Greeks had worshipped there weren't male Gods but instead female ones. However, this is not where the term, 'Lesbian' comes from. Instead there once lived a woman on Lesbos named Sapho who was a poet and the leader of a commune made up of a group of young women. Her writings were all about feminine beauty and how she loved the girls in her charge. Before the word, 'Lesbian' came into modern usage, girls who liked other girls were often called, 'Saphists.'

While the British poet, politician, and philosopher Edward Carpenter called his desires, 'homogenic love,' the word 'Homosexuality' began to take prominence in Germany/Austria/Hungary in the latter half of the 19th century. It was not accepted immediately by everyone as the best term to describe same sex love. Instead it had competitors that some preferred, all meaning contrary. These words that were used to describe a gay person were: Inverts, urnings, and uranians.

By 1950's America the word to describe gays was that they were 'homophiles.' As activism grew and the lifestyle became more mainstream, this was replaced by the words, 'Homosexual,' 'Gay,' and 'Lesbian.'

The word, 'Queer' was originally an insult. By the 1990s it was taken over by gay activists to be used with pride. 'Queer' is now something that encompasses all homosexual and gender identities.

The Gay Community is here to stay. But who knows? Maybe in the future straight people will be called, 'Georgeclooneyphiles' and gay people: 'Rickymartinites.'