How Therian and Otherkin Words Changed: A History of Terms

Why the words mattered

A therian cannot show anyone a tail. An elf cannot produce a birth certificate from another world. What these communities had, from the beginning, was language: the slow, careful work of finding words that fit experiences most people had never heard described. Each new term was an attempt to say something more exactly, and many were argued over for years before they settled.

The story is told here, as on the main history page, without the names of the people and places involved. Where a date is uncertain, the page says so. The glossary holds the current meaning of every word mentioned.

A timeline of words

The 1970s Circles of self-described elves write to one another by letter and adopt the elven star, the seven-pointed heptagram. Their word for themselves is simply elves.
1990 On a mailing list for elves, a member suggests otherkind in the spring for those whose kinship is with other beings. It is soon shortened to otherkin.
1993 Regulars of an online group for werewolf fiction begin to speak of themselves in earnest as weres and, at first, as lycanthropes.
1994 In December, therianthropy is adopted as a general term wide enough for every species, and therian comes with it.
1995 to 1996 A long document of frequently asked questions sets out the vocabulary of shifting, phantom limbs, and spiritual and other understandings.
Late 1990s Contherian is coined for therians who do not shift.
The 2000s Suntherian and animal-hearted appear. Fictionkin identity is discussed, at first under other names.
2014 Alterhuman is coined as a roomy umbrella for the whole family.
The 2020s Short videos carry therian and its neighbors to millions, and the words take on new, looser senses.

The first words: were and lycanthrope

When people in the werewolf discussion group first began to say that they felt themselves to be wolves inwardly, they reached for the words already at hand. Were, from the Old English wer, meaning man, was short and friendly and carried the right echo of werewolf. Lycanthrope, from the Greek for wolf and human, was grander and older, and is discussed under lycanthropy.

Both had the same problem. They were wolf words, and the group was not all wolves. People who felt themselves to be cats, bears, foxes and birds were speaking up, and calling them all lycanthropes was plainly wrong. The animal itself also needed a name. For a time the word phenotype, borrowed loosely from biology, was used for the kind of animal a person felt themselves to be.

Finding a wider word

As the need for a wider word grew, more than one candidate was put forward. One was theriomorph, meaning animal-shaped. It did not take hold, perhaps because it seemed to speak of the body when the experience was not about the body at all.

In December 1994 the word that did take hold was therianthropy, from the Greek therion, wild animal, and anthropos, human being. It was not new. Scholars of folklore and religion had long used it for stories of human-animal transformation and for beings part human and part animal. The community borrowed it and gave it a second meaning. A person was a therianthrope, soon shortened in everyday use to therian.

Phenotype lasted a while longer, but it was eventually replaced by theriotype, which said plainly what it meant and could not be confused with its biological namesake.

Otherkin and kintype

The otherkin had their own word years before the therians found theirs. Otherkind, suggested in the spring of 1990, was a way of making room on a list for elves for people whose kinship lay with dragons and other beings. Shortened to otherkin, it has been in continuous use ever since, and the otherkin overview tells its story.

Later, the word kintype was formed by analogy with theriotype, so that an otherkin could name the being they were in the same way a therian named the animal. The two words have traveled together ever since.

The language of shifting

The long FAQ of 1995 to 1996 did a great deal to fix the community's vocabulary. It set out the idea of shifting, the passing changes in how strongly a person feels their animal side, and it described phantom limbs, the felt presence of a tail, ears or wings that are not physically there. It also drew a clear line between spiritual explanations and others, a line the community has respected ever since.

Over the following years the kinds of shift were named more finely: the mental shift, the phantom shift, the sensory shift, the dream shift, the cameo shift, and in spiritual accounts the astral and aura shifts. The physical shift kept its name only as the thing that does not happen.

Words for those the first words missed

Much of the later vocabulary was coined by people who read the early writing and did not quite recognize themselves in it.

Contherian came in the late 1990s, for therians whose animal side never comes and goes because it never stepped back.
Suntherian appeared in the 2000s, for a constant blend that drifts gently. An older word, vacillant, had named something similar.
Animal-hearted, also from the 2000s, gave a name to people who feel an animal as kin without feeling that they are it. The wider word otherhearted later stretched the idea to any creature.
Fictionkin settled as the usual name for those who identify as a being from a story, after some years under other names.
Copinglink and otherlink were coined more recently, so that chosen identities could be named honestly beside unchosen ones.
Alterhuman, in 2014, gathered them all under one roof. The page on the alterhuman umbrella sets them side by side.

Older and newer terms

Some words were replaced outright. Others survive beside their successors with a slightly different shade of meaning.

Older term	Newer term	What changed
Were	Therian	A wolf-flavored word gave way to one that fits every species. Were is still heard among older members.
Lycanthrope	Therianthrope	Wolf-specific, and easily confused with folklore and medicine. Now mostly historical.
Phenotype	Theriotype	A borrowed biological term was replaced by one made for the purpose.
Otherkind	Otherkin	Soon shortened, and in continuous use ever since.
Vacillant	Suntherian	Close in meaning. Suntherian is now the commoner word.
Animal-hearted	Otherhearted	Not a replacement but a widening. Both remain in use.
Kin (a person who is otherkin)	To kin (to relate to a character)	A new casual sense grew beside the old one. See kinning.

The words in the 2020s

In the 2020s short videos carried the word therian to millions of people, many of them very young, and language that had been shaped slowly on forums was suddenly spoken at great speed. Some words loosened. Therian is now sometimes used for anyone who enjoys masks, tails or quadrobics, whatever their sense of self. The casual verb to kin, already common on social platforms, spread further still. Gear became, for many newcomers, the most visible part of the whole subject.

Older members have sometimes greeted these changes with dismay. But every generation of this community has bent the words to fit the people using them, and the earliest weres would hardly recognize some of the vocabulary that their successors now treat as fixed. The library's practice is simple: record each sense, say which is older, and leave people to use the words that describe them truthfully.