Quote:
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Originally posted by JayBEE!!
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Actually I was thinking that Sororis may have been an early term for women's organization or something. Thanks for letting me know that "Frater" means brother. But now another curious thing comes into play.
Questions:
1.) Since "Frater" means brother, does any Women's Fraternity call each other brothers?
2.) Did any Woman's Fraternity, use to be a Traditional mens Fraternity that evently changed?
Ok, I'll bite.....
1) Fraternity comes from the Greek word "phratria", meaning people holding a common interest. So, in that sense, the ladies were taking it from the Greek "Phratria", rather than the Latin "frater" for brother. Also, remember, we are
GREEK LETTER ORGS, not ROMAN letter orgs or LATIN letter orgs!
Women's Fraternity NEVER meant "brotherhood". It always meant "people holding a common interest. I suppose if the women had spelt it "phraternity", it would help to clear up the confusion, but it's always been spelled with "f".
Here's a blurb from my National:
Delta Gamma Fraternity is the correct name of the organization. Why isn't Delta Gamma called a sorority officially? At the time of the founding of most of the older women's fraternities, the Greek derivative phratres of phratria, meaning tribes or groups of people with similar interests and backgrounds, was the basis for the title, fraternity. No doubt, because the women's organizations were modeled in many ways after the older men's groups, the women simply used the title fraternity, too.
2). I don't think any NPC orgs that are called "sorority" ever were a fraternity first and then changed their name.
For example, these are the NPC's called "sorority" (that I can think of):
Gamma Phi Beta Sorority
Delta Zeta Sorority
Alpha Delta Pi Sorority
Sigma Kappa Sorority
Kappa Delta Sorority
Sigma Sigma Sigma Sorority
I don't believe that any of them were
TheirName Fraternity, and then changed...I think they were all a
TheirName Sorority from the beginning, or at least
TheirName Society, and then maybe adopted the Sorority part of the name later...I guess you would have to ask one of them? Delta Gamma was a Fraternity from the beginning.