Like cognate genus, kind, meaning ‘class of entities sharing common attributes’, has evolved from familial roots, relating to birth. And, like cognate generous, the adjective indicates that we have traditionally been kind, friendly, and compassionate to our relatives, although there are many exceptions, of course.

Curiously, in applications deriving from the Vulgate, gentile came to mean in the fifteenth century, not ‘one who belongs to the same nation or clan’, but one who belongs to the opposite, specifically those who are not Jews. The Late Latin gentīlēs was used to translate Greek ethnikos, referring to ta ethne ‘the nations’, in turn translating Hebrew ha goyim, ‘the (non-jewish) nations’.There is some confusion here because Stones Concordance suggests that Hebrew goy regularly meant in the Old Testament any people in contrast to Israel.

The Latin root of genius indicates that the Romans were aware of a generative power within humans, as were the ancient Greeks, who used daimon with a similar meaning, denoting an ‘inner guide’ or ‘guardian spirit’.

We can see from the root of genuine that what is honest and true emerges naturally from the Divine Origin of the Universe, through Genesis, free of the delusions of our cultural conditioning.

We see from the root of genus that the natural human tendency to form conceptual distinctions derives from our familial and cultural background. This has led Homo to be the genus of all human species during the past few million years, of which only Homo sapiens is extant.