the.com/humanist

means A person who grounds their ethics and sense of meaning in human reason, experience, and welfare rather than divine authority.

from Traces to Latin 'humanus' (human, humane), via the Renaissance 'umanista' — a student of the 'studia humanitatis,' the classical curriculum of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history that scholars revived in contrast to medieval theology. Those Renaissance humanists weren't necessarily irreligious — they just centered human texts and human excellence. The word drifted toward its modern, more secular sense — ethics without a god — mainly from the 1800s onward, as 'humanism' came to name a worldview rather than just a course of study.