History Main / OfThePeople

Compare TheChosenPeople, when this arises from the belief that one's group or species is favored by a higher power. No relation to PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny, where totalitarian regimes put "Of the People" and other [[{{Newspeak}} similar, democratic-sounding phrases]] in their titles.

The Germanic peoples called themselves ''Diutisc'' ("of the people"), whence "Deutsch," "Dutch," and this trope name; but they called their neighbors "Walhaz" (which originally meant a particular Celtic tribe, then broadened in scope to mean all foreigners, then narrowed to mean Latins), whence [[UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}} Wallonia]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Romania}} Wallachia]], and UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}. The ''Diutisc'' didn't think very highly of the ''Walhaz'' (Martin Luther spoke of "Deutsche Treue, welsche Tücke," "German integrity, Latin faithlessness," and in modern English "welshing" is not a compliment), but they never denied that the ''Walhaz'' were human.

"Slav" derives from ''slovenin'', "speaker", while the Slavs called their neighbors ''nemetsi'' ("mute" or "mumblers"): thus the names for Germany in most Slavic languages. (Not in Russian, though; the Russians know Germany as ''Germánija'', from Latin ''Germania'', but the German people are still ''Nemtsy''.) The Persians/Iranians and Arabs got their names for Austria, ''Nimsa'' and ''Nimse'', from ''nemetsi''; they got the name from the Ottoman Turks, who had conquered most of the South Slavs and picked up the Slavic name for the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic Hapsburgs]] to the north.

The classical Greeks were similar to the Slavs, giving their neighbors a name that cast aspersions on their speaking skills: Greek "barbaros" meant "babbler," and it meant Persians and Middle Easterners, whose languages sounded like "bar bar bar" to the Greeks (their equivalent of "BlahBlahBlah"), later expanded to Celts, Tracians, Italians, Iberians and pretty much all non-Greeks. Therefore, the term didn't necessarily refer to the sorts of peoples who we think of when we hear "barbarian", but a generality of peoples among which there were highly advanced civilizations. Ironically, Romans ''were'' included in the term, but they obviously excluded their own kin when they adopted the term themselves, upgrading it to all non-Greek and non-Roman-or-Romanized.

It's widely believed that most northern Native Americans called themselves "the only real people" and their neighbors "the evil enemies," but this isn't usually true. The vast majority of tribes knew themselves by a name related to their location (Wyandot, "dwellers in the peninsula", also known as Hurons) or culture (Haudenosaunee, "people building a long house" in reference to their alliance, also known as Iroquois), and their neighbors by similar, if sometimes less complimentary, terms. There were a few tribes which called themselves things like "The Principal People" (Ani Yunwiya, also known as Cherokee, "Dwellers in the Mountains"), or even "The People" ("Inuit" in Inuktitut), and there were a few so warlike that their neighbors called them "the enemy" (''Comanche'' in Ute; their name for themselves is "Buffalo-Eaters"); but there doesn't seem to have been any case of a tribe that did both. Most tribes that gave themselves names that expressed their superiority called themselves some variation of "The ''Best'' People", like the Cherokees (or the Chinese) -- not "The ''Only'' People"; and the Inuit name for themselves is best explained by how there are so desperately few people that far north. Individual Inuit villages could, and sometimes did, end up so completely cut off from the world that they were apparently the only humans left alive; in a context like that, "the people" doesn't mean "our neighbors are subhuman," it means "we don't have any neighbors at all."

* In VideoGame/DiscoElysium the leading world power Moralintern was founded by their supernatural patron saint Dolores Dei. Dolores enforced her "humanist" ideology with an army succinctly named "The Army of Humanity". While this might seem like your typical PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny type of naming convention, your skills point out that the naming directly implies that their enemies are not human.

* In many of the works of Creator/ZennaHenderson there's a group of humanoid aliens living on Earth that refers to themselves as "The People" in so many words. They arrived here around the turn of the 20th century, when their home planet exploded. They look human enough to pass for human, provided they're not flying at the time, or doing one of the many other wondrous feats they're known and loved for by generations of SF readers. While some isolated groups on Earth attempt to suppress and deny their heritage, others continue to use their powers discreetly. While continuing to call themselves "The People", they refer to the inhabitants of Earth as "Outsiders", and there's a distinct sense that they continue to call themselves that as a way of reminding themselves that they are not human.
* The name Mri in Creator/CJCherryh's ''Literature/TheFadedSun'' trilogy means "people". What do these catlike aliens call humans and regul? Tsi-mri, "not-people". This makes the entry of Duncan into their society all the more noteworthy, and the inclusion of three humans in their holy records unheard of for any other species.
* Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/TheCarpetPeople'' opens with a prologue that describes how every tribe in the Carpet starts out believing that are the only people in the world, and call themselves the "true human beings" in their own language. As their numbers grow they expand out and discover there are other tribes out there, that also call themselves the "true human beings" and don't agree that the first tribe are real people. By the present day the humanoid people of the Carpet all acknowledge each other as people, albeit often people they don't like, but consider the [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Mouls]] monsters. Later, someone tells the protagonist that in the Mouls' language, "Moul" means "true human beings".
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' series:
** In ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'' the terrifyingly warlike D'regs adopted their name from the local word for 'enemy', because it was what everyone else in the area already called them, anyway. ''Literature/SoulMusic'' reveals that conversely, the D'regs word for 'stranger' also means 'target'.
--->...and the D'regs were at war with everyone, including one another, and having considerable fun because the D'reg word for 'stranger' was the same as for 'target'.
** This trope is examined by Pratchett's co-authors in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'' books, in which Cohen and Stewart refer to the cultural conditioning and education of children as the "Make-A-Human-Being Kit". Every tribe has one exclusive to itself, and if you grew up in a culture that uses a different version of the Kit, your status as a True Human Being is probationary at best.
** A similar idea is used in ''Literature/InterestingTimes'', though with countries instead of people:
--->It is more than just a wall, it is a marker. On one side is the Empire, which in the Agatean language is a word identical with "universe". On the other side is -- nothing. After all, the universe is everything there is.\\\

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* In ComicBook/BlackPanther, Wakandans are somewhat xenophobic and racist. They tend to view foreigners as barbarians and avoid doing business with them. When one government official suggests giving Westerners the CureForCancer, T'Challa overrules him, fearing that they would somehow turn the cure into a weapon.
* One issue of ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' revolves around an east-European tribe who call themselves the People and are decidedly contempteous of outsiders. [[spoiler: As the story goes on, it's revealed that they're werewolves.]]

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* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Return of the Archons", outsiders are said to be ''not of the body.''
* In the 1982 ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial ''Kinda'', the Kinda refer to themselves as "we" and outsiders as "not-we." UsefulNotes/{{Whovians}} have since co-opted the latter term to refer to non-fans.

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** The term ''Shemlen'' for Humans is the most frequently used and noteworthy. The name derives from the fact that Elves were originally said to have been immortal, until exposure to humans caused them to suffer a quickening and become mortal themselves. Due to this and a long tumultuous history between the groups, the term ''Shemlen'' has naturally garnered a rather pejorative meaning, although it can be used neutrally. [[spoiler:Though it turns out only the ancient Elvhen ''nobility'' possessed immortality. The lower/slave castes were always mortal. It's likely that modern Elves are the descendants of these slaves, meaning they never lost immortality since they never had it in the first place.]]

** The Qunari have a similar notion: "Outsider" in their language is "Bas". It can also mean "Thing". The name "Qunari" actually means "follower of the Qun", with the Qun being their religion; like with the elves, they take the distinction quite seriously but everyone else treats it as just a name for the race. In fact the race doesn't seem to ''have'' a name otherwise.

* In Mary Doria Russell's speculative fiction novel, ''The Sparrow'', one of the two species of aliens present in the work refer to themselves as the "Runa," which simply translates into "the people." However, the Runa seem very tolerant of the differences of outsiders. When a group of humans make first contact with some Runa, the villagers dub them "foreigners," using a word that literally means "people from the next river valley."
* The aliens [[ScienceMarchesOn inhabiting Jupiter]] in Isaac Asimov's short story "Not Final!" alternate between this and comparing humans to vermin.

* Steven Brust's ''Literature/{{Dragaera}}'' series renders this attitude by having both Dragaerans (elves, more or less) and Easterners (humans, apparently), refer to themselves as "humans", and considering the other group not humans.

* In many of the works of Zenna Henderson there's a group of humanoid aliens living on Earth that refers to themselves as "The People" in so many words. They arrived here around the turn of the 20th century, when their home planet exploded. They look human enough to pass for human, provided they're not flying at the time, or doing one of the many other wondrous feats they're known and loved for by generations of SF readers. While some isolated groups on Earth attempt to suppress and deny their heritage, others continue to use their powers discreetly. While continuing to call themselves "The People", they refer to the inhabitants of Earth as "Outsiders", and there's a distinct sense that they continue to call themselves that as a way of reminding themselves that they are not human.

Real-world tribal peoples, by contrast, are much more likely to call themselves "those who speak eloquently" and their neighbors "the people who don't know how to talk." Peoples who call themselves "the only real people" are few and far between; peoples who call their neighbors "not real people" are practically unknown. A rare exception may be the various European biologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who proposed that other ethnic groups were actually different species. Their theories have largely been discredited by UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, wherein ThoseWackyNazis acted upon their recommendations and tried to kill 40 million people and enslave a further 140 million (but "only" successfully knocked off 25 million). Today's true believers in the validity of Of the People in the real world overlap significantly with Holocaust deniers.

"Slav" derives from ''slovenin'', "speaker", while the Slavs called their neighbors ''nemetsi'' ("mute" or "mumblers"): thus the names for Germany in most Slavic languages. (Not in Russian, though; the Russians know Germany as ''Germánija'', from Latin ''Germania'', but the German people are still ''Nemtsy''.) The Persians/Iranians and Arabs got their names for Austria, ''Nimsa'' and ''Nimse'', from ''nemetsi''; they got the name from the Ottoman Turks, who had conquered most of the South Slavs and picked up the Slavic name for the Hapsburgs to the north.

The classical Greeks were similar to the Slavs, giving their neighbors a name that cast aspersions on their speaking skills: Greek "barbaros" meant "babbler," and it meant Persians and Middle Easterners, whose languages sounded like "bar bar bar" to the Greeks (their equivalent of "BlahBlahBlah"); it didn't refer to the sorts of peoples who we think of when we hear "barbarian", but highly advanced civilizations.

It's widely believed that most northern Native Americans called themselves "the only real people" and their neighbors "the evil enemies," but this isn't true. The vast majority of tribes knew themselves by a name related to their location (Wyandot, "dwellers in the peninsula", also known as Hurons) or culture (Haudenosaunee, "people building a long house" in reference to their alliance, also known as Iroquois), and their neighbors by similar, if sometimes less complimentary, terms. There were a few tribes which called themselves things like "The Principal People" (Ani Yunwiya, also known as Cherokee, "Dwellers in the Mountains"), or even "The People" ("Inuit" in Inuktitut), and there were a few so warlike that their neighbors called them "the enemy" (''Comanche'' in Ute; their name for themselves is "Buffalo-Eaters"); but there doesn't seem to have been any case of a tribe that did both. Most tribes that gave themselves names that expressed their superiority called themselves some variation of "The ''Best'' People", like the Cherokees (or the Chinese) -- not "The ''Only'' People"; and the Inuit name for themselves is best explained by how there are so desperately few people that far north. Individual Inuit villages could, and sometimes did, end up so completely cut off from the world that they were apparently the only humans left alive; in a context like that, "the people" doesn't mean "our neighbors are subhuman," it means "we don't have any neighbors at all."