The Hebrew word is אָדָם (ʼādām), from Genesis 1:27: “So God created hā-ʼādām in his own image…”

What it means: Adam is a generic term for “human” or “humankind,” not primarily a personal name here. It appears with the definite article (hā-ʼādām, “the human”), which marks it as a category rather than a proper name. The word is tied to ʼădāmâ (ground, soil), so it carries the sense of “earthling,” a creature drawn from the earth (see Gen 2:7).

Why it matters in this verse:

• It’s collective. The verse immediately shifts to a plural (“them“), and the next line says “male and female he created them.” So ādām here means humanity as a whole, both sexes together, rather than a single man.

• It’s the same word in 5:1-2, where God names the male-and-female pair “ādām” on the day they were created.

• The verse is poetic and emphatic. The verb “created” (bārāʼ) appears three times in this one verse, and the parallelism of “image of God” lines up with “male and female,” stressing that the divine image belongs to all of humanity.

Related terms you may run into: ʼîsh (man, an individual male) and ʼishshâ (woman) appear in Gen 2:23, where they are distinct from the generic ādām.