So today I was doing the lowest effort research In hopes of finding An old medieval word that can be used for generic Mammalian beast-men races. Which led me to discover The Medieval Bestiary, A website that's meant to compile Information and beliefs from bestiaries from the Medieval Age. And very quickly I discovered the Cefusa, which only has the physical description of being a quadrupedal animal with the hind legs being more similar two human legs (at least in terms of feet), and the front legs being similar to (at least in that bang the feet are hands), that are mentioned in like one or two manuscripts. The illustrations on the site are few (5 as of writing this), And most of them are just quadrupedal animals with human hands and feet. But two of them legitimately look like furries:
Cefusa is basically perfect for a beast-man race:
Has historical precedent.
Was unpopular in it's time, and is barely known of now. (Meaning basically no one is going to get upset if you use the term in "the wrong way". (Except for it was meant to represent sin or hypocrisy or something, but who really cares about that?))
Is only used to describe animals that are defined only by being a beast both of human hands and feet. (Which is vague enough to slot furries into.)
Is not tied to any particular animal. (Not as useful for non mammalian races, since humans tend to consolidate non mammals more than mammals, so more useful for mammals the non mammals. But can still be used for non mammals if one wished.)
In my limited research: who could also basically draw a furry OC and close enough to the style appropriate to your chosen medieval time period, called it a "wild man/woodwose" or "satyr", and people of the period would have probably thought nothing of it (unless you get especially weird with that). But those other terms have a lot of baggage that will get annoying people angry at you. And "cefusa" as a word basically has no cultural relevance, so I might as well use that.
Any beast-man races I put into my works that's meant to be basically any mammal I am going to call "cefusas" from now on. And you're perfectly free to do the same! (Not like I could legally stop you, or that I would have any more right.)
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