‹ Back to the text

jano

jana

masc nom sg of jana (noun)

1. man; person; fellow
2. men; people; population

Built from

• jan — root · to beget, be born
  From PIE *ǵenh₂-. Concrete imagery: a being that has come forth from generation. Sanskrit cognate janáti 'begets'; Latin genus, gēns; English kin, kind.
• a — ending · masculine singular thematic vowel
  The thematic -a marks masculine nouns of the first declension in Pali and Sanskrit, connecting the root to case endings.

Etymology. From Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₂- 'to beget, produce'; cognate with Sanskrit janás, Latin genus 'kind, race', English kin, and Greek genos 'race, kind'. The root sense is 'one born' or 'offspring', which generalized to 'person, human being'.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

Lite mode — plain HTML for e-readers and old browsers. Full version