Glossary – Origins of the Word ‘Democracy’

Nobody knows who invented the term, or exactly where and when the word ‘democracy’ was first used. It is commonly thought that it is of classical Greek origin, but the new research summarised in The Life and Death of Democracy shows that the feminine noun dÄ“mokratia (meaning the rule of the people: from dÄ“mos, ‘the people’, and kratein, ‘to rule’) has much older roots. It is traceable to the Linear B script of the Mycenaean period, seven to ten centuries earlier, to the late Bronze Age civilization (c. 1500-1200 BCE) that was centred on Mycenae and other urban settlements of the Peloponnese. Exactly how and when the Mycenaeans invented terms like damos (a group of people who hold land in common) and damokoi (an official linked to the damos) is unclear, but there is a chance that the family of terms we use today when speaking of democracy have Eastern origins, for instance in the ancient Sumerian references to the dumu, the ‘inhabitants’ or ‘sons’ or ‘children’ of a geographic place.

For further discussion of the new evidence concerning the origins of the language of ‘democracy’, see The Life and Death of Democracy, chapter 2