The word Fraternity

[meheron]

Do you guys know where the word Fraternity or sorority came from? This is what my chapter has found (its on our web page now http://www.bsu.edu/web/theta/Intropage/introlinks.htm)

Fraternity comes from the Latin word fraternitas, that describes a feeling of love between two brothers. Its abstract interpretation is basically deep friendship between people, male or female. Since there is no such word as sorority' s, obviously we're a fraternity . . . for women. The word sorority was adopted in 1882 from the Latin sorer, meaning sister.

Has anyone else heard any other story?

[Tom Earp]

Very well posted!

You have done a little study on this and I for one hope many read it!

Maybe some will find it enlightening!

Thank you, if you get anymore Info Please feel free to post it!

Maybe this will alleviate a lost of Pain for some people on this site!

[MysticCat]

Originally posted by meheron
Fraternity comes from the Latin word fraternitas, that describes a feeling of love between two brothers. Its abstract interpretation is basically deep friendship between people, male or female.

Hmmmm. Well, while it is certainly to be hoped that the Latin word fraternitas describes a feeling of love between brothers, that's not quite what it means. It simply means "brotherhood," from the Latin frater, "brother." It came into Middle English as fraternite, and originally was used primarily to refer to groups of laymen organized for religious or charitable purposes. "Sorority" takes the Latin soror, which means "sister," and applies the same suffix (itas, "ity") as "fraternity."

[nyrdrms]

I posted this before and just decided to copy and paste....

The word sorority was coined by Dr Frank Smalley in 1882 when Gamma Phi Beta installed her Beta chapter at the University of Michigan, making Gamma Phi Beta the first "sorority." Since then, sorority has become a more common term for female Greek-letter organizations, although many still remain fraternities.

[CutiePie2000]

I will recycle my post...

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
Alpha Epsilon Phi 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

http://greekchat.com/gcforums/showth...threadid=18800

[MysticCat]

Originally posted by CutiePie2000 (in part)
I will recycle my post...

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!

....

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....

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I think a quick look in any dictionary will show that "fraternity" comes from the Latin fraternitas, not directly from Greek. Remember that the word "fraternity" has been around a lot longer (centuries longer) than GLO's, and its original meaning in English was "a brotherhood," usually of a religious nature.

To take the question a step further, the Latin frater is in turn (and as your National's blurb suggests) descended from the Greek phratria. In ancient Greece, a phratria was a subdivision of a phyle, which was a tribe or clan based on supposed kinship. So, a phratria was a group of closely related people -- larger than a family, but smaller than a tribe or clan.

The founders of the first women's fraternities may indeed have looked into the etymological roots of the word "fraternity" to find the connotation of "people with a common interest," but the word itself came into English from Latin.

[nyrdrms]

Gamma Phi Beta was first a women's fraternity, like I posted earlier, it wasn't until the installation of the Beta chapter, that the word "sorority" was coined. Women's Greek letter organizations after 1882 had the option of calling themselves women's fraternities or sororities. Gamma Phi Beta is known now as a sorority, but it took eight years for the word to come into usage.

[AGDAlum]

Alpha Gams are taught that the root of "fraternity" is the Greek word for "family" or "clan."

I've never heard the explanation *why* Dr. Coddington, who advised the founders of Alpha Phi, Gamma Phi Beta, and Alpha Gamma Delta, coined "sorority" and why he didn't insist that Alpha Gamma Delta use the word. (Alpha Gam came along 30 years after Gamma Phi.)