Civil Engineering: Anachronism and Black Sheep

The paper presents a thesis that the word “civil” in “civil engineering” is anachronistic and does not represent the works of the so-called civil engineer. The origin and root of the words “engineer” and civil are traced. Engineer is seen to have its roots via the Greek and Latin in the Sanskrit word jan, meaning life, whereas civil is traced to the differentiation that engineers of the 18th and 19th centuries created from their military engineer counterparts. The word engineer was used as far back as the 14th century, though, much of it in nontechnical terms. The evolution of the practice of civil engineering, and the history of the formation of societies are studied to determine how tasks relate to the word civil. Of particular interest is to see what the practitioners and founders of societies aimed to embody in this field of civil engineering. The paper aims to explore the factors and influences in the practice and naming of the civil engineer. It delves into the roots and origins of the names of a number of engineering disciplines, giving explanations and commentary on the implications of those names, and finds that all those names relate to technical functions. The paper concludes that the name of civil engineering does not represent the functional tasks of the civil engineer, in contrast to names of other engineering disciplines, and is, moreover, out of place with modern times. What’s in a name? This paper seeks to find out.