“Were” is cognate to Latin vir ‘man’—cf. “werewolf” (‘man-wolf’).
“Woman” comes from a compound meaning “woman-person” (wif-mæn, cf. “wife”); a man was a wæpned-mæn (“weapon-person” or “penis-person”). The lexical narrowing of “man” to mean ‘male’ happened later, and it was indeed originally a gender-neutral term.
There’s a theory that, at one time, “man” was a gender neutral term for persons and we called males “weremen” and obviously women “women”
That probably isn’t true, but it’s fun to think about a world where that was reversed.
EDIT Also evidently there was wifmann and wapman, which is an even funnier world to imagine.
“Were” is cognate to Latin vir ‘man’—cf. “werewolf” (‘man-wolf’).
“Woman” comes from a compound meaning “woman-person” (wif-mæn, cf. “wife”); a man was a wæpned-mæn (“weapon-person” or “penis-person”). The lexical narrowing of “man” to mean ‘male’ happened later, and it was indeed originally a gender-neutral term.
I can’t read that without thinking of “Democracy Manifest”
Blame the Anglo-Saxons for that one. It was their idea.
According to this, whether or not it is real: