Left-handed people, or sinistrals, have been discriminated against by right-handed ones, or dextrals. Actually, in numerous languages, the word ‘left’ has ominous or negative connotations. Sinister, meaning left in Latin, also means ‘feeling of harmful or evil events.’ In Korean, ‘left’ means wrongful or twisted, and according to Oxford University Press, the word ‘left’ itself came from the old English word ‘lyft,’ which means weak or ignorant (Liberman, 2012). Left in Goth refers to crooked or weak and the same in Lithuanian, Latvian and old French.

    As indicated from these connotations, there were huge discriminations against left-handed people throughout the history of mankind and being left-handed functioned as a limitation of one. Mongolian nomadic tribes thought of lefthanders as untrustworthy, and Romans avoided lefthanders in the army for being unsuitable for tactics that were designed for righthanders. Anatoly Liberman, a historian and an etymologist from Minnesota University, suggested that these discriminations came from the fact that most righthanders’ left hands were weaker than their right hands (Liberman, 2012). As a part of discrimination, various cultures forced the lefthanders to change the preference in hands from left to right to blend into society.

    However, nowadays, being left-handed is beneficial in various fields of professions, such as baseball, boxing, sword fighting, math and even in fine arts. There are advantages to being a minority and being creative. Left-handed players in baseball, or the southpaws, tend to be better than those who are right-handed or orthodoxes. In Medieval and Renaissance European martial arts handbooks, there are warnings about the left-handed swordsman because the opportunity to fight with left-handed swordsmen was extremely rare, and it was hard to have enough training, and the same limitations apply to boxing and fencing. Also, scientists revealed that being left-handed has a significant relationship with being gifted in math (Sala et al., 2017). Last but not least, according to Fleur E. van der Feen, a Dutch neurobiologist from the University of Groningen, being creative has a correlation with being left-handed, which indicates that left-handed people have an advantage in fine arts (van der Feen et al., 2019). As if to support the research result, numerous renowned artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Beethoven, Charlie Chaplin and even Matt Groening, are left-handed.

    Although etymologists suggested that being left-handed has a sinister meaning in various cultures and languages, being left-handed has various advantages in many fields of athletics and academics. Most discrimination against the left-handed around the world has disappeared, as political correctness has influenced the world, and nowadays, scientists have discovered that being left-handed is being gifted in some fields. So, there is no reason for left-handed people to change their preferred hands, and the same applies to right-handed people.

Citation:

OUPblog. (2010). The Sinister Influence of the Left Hand. [online] Available at: https://blog.oup.com/2010/09/left-hand/ [Accessed 19 Jan. 2022].

Sala, G., Signorelli, M., Barsuola, G., Bolognese, M. and Gobet, F. (2017). The Relationship between Handedness and Mathematics Is Non-linear and Is Moderated by Gender, Age, and Type of Task. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.

van der Feen, F.E., Zickert, N., Groothuis, T.G.G. and Geuze, R.H. (2019). Does hand skill asymmetry relate to creativity, developmental and health issues and aggression as markers of fitness? Laterality, 25(1), pp.53–86.

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Seungmin Kang.