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Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) by jkot on Friday August 05, 2016 @02:35AM (#12230442)
> most ancient societies were blatantly misogynistic

Ancient Egypt was more liberal than US in 1950. And do you have any concrete evidence that 'Kushim' is not a female name? I think it is sexist to assume it could not be a women.

Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) by erdevs on Friday August 05, 2016 @03:25AM (#12230604)
> Ancient Egypt was more liberal than US in 1950.

Right. With all of the slavery. And the emperor/pharaoh totalitarianism. And the state-sponsored religion. Very liberal.

> And do you have any concrete evidence that 'Kushim' is not a female name?

I did not say whether Kushim specifically was a male or female name, did I? Show me where. I suggest you read more carefully before jumping to conclusions and certainly before making inflammatory and insulting accusations to someone.

> I think it is sexist to assume it could not be a women.

Since I made no such assumption nor such comment, I have no idea why you wrote this. I didn't even weigh in on whether "Kushim" is likely to be a name at all. (It could be a title or a number of other possible monikers.)

Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) by jkot on Friday August 05, 2016 @04:31AM (#12230798)
> the odds ... are that the first recorded human's name was a male name.

I think you have no evidence for that claim. Lot of ancient societies had equality (Egypt) or were even female dominated (ancient Crete).

Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) by erdevs on Friday August 05, 2016 @11:06AM (#12232855)
Do you have evidence it was more likely a female name?

You think it is exactly 50/50 odds?

You don't think it's possible to reason and make educated estimates?

Of all known ancient societies which are considered contenders for having left the earliest example of writing, how many seem to have been more patriarchal than totally fair or matriarchal? Let's think about it...

Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) by ajuc on Friday August 05, 2016 @03:15AM (#12230576)
> And do you have any concrete evidence that 'Kushim' is not a female name?

Most Indoeuropean languages have a vovel (most often "a") at the end of female names, and a consonant at the end of male names. It's just a consequence of the gender system and postfixes.

I'm not sure how old is this distinction, and I don't know if this writing system even preserved the vovels, if yes - it is indeed partial evidence that it was a male name.

More: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-female-names-end-in-vow...

In my (Slavic) language all female names end with "a" and all male names end with consonants.

Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015) by nandemo on Friday August 05, 2016 @06:49AM (#12231245)
But Sumerian was not Indo-european. It's considered a language isolate. And even if the name was from a different language that co-existed with Sumerian (like Akkadian), it was likely an Afro-Asiatic one.