 AD 70 to be the name of a traditional ancestor of the Germanic peoples and son of Tuisto; modern sources other than Tacitus have reinterpreted this as "first man".In Old English the words ' and ' (and ') were used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, while ' had the primary meaning of "adult male human" but could also be used for gender neutral purposes (as is the case with modern German "", corresponding to the pronoun in the English utterance "one does what one must").Some etymologies treat the root as an independent one, as does the "American Heritage Dictionary".