[coldtea]

>I'm not sure what you mean by "there are different kinds of vegans". The term vegan was coined by the vegan society.

Etymology is not use. Use defines language.

The "Vegan society" of mid-20th century is an insignificant part of the history of vegan ideas. It's just where the term originated in the US as a standalone term.

Millions of peoples call themselves vegans, and have adopted this or that part of veganism (or even just vegeterianism) without having ever heard about the Vegan Society and its founders.

The definition of the term doesn't belong, copyright style, to those that coined them, but to how it evolved in language by those that use it.

The dictionary itself captures that use, and doesn't care about how people originally defined the term in some office:

"vegan: a strict vegetarian who consumes no food (such as meat, eggs, or dairy products) that comes from animals"

Like how surrealism as a term is not defined by what Andre Breton wrote in some official documents the 20s and 30s.

[ma2rten]

I highly doubt that there are millions of people who call themselves vegan without having heard of this definition. People don't just wake up one day and stop eating animal products.

It's kind of like the term hacker. The general public understands it to mean one thing, but vast majority of people who apply the term to themselves understand it to mean another thing.

[coldtea]

>I highly doubt that there are millions of people who call themselves vegan without having heard of this definition.

You can doubt it, but you'd be wrong. At best they'd chanced about some historical background piece that contained the definition. But the huge majority wont tie it to some 19th century "Vegan Society" or know/remember anything about some "original definition".

>It's kind of like the term hacker. The general public understands it to mean one thing, but vast majority of people who apply the term to themselves understand it to mean another thing.

Well, the latter are wrong in your sense (etymology, history) too. There are references to the term "hacker" to mean intruder on other systems from decades before people self-identified and pushed for the supposedly benign-only definition. (E.g. there are reports of "hackers" messing with telephone services and bringing them down as far back as the early sixties (literally mentioned as "hackers", not phreakers).

[ma2rten]

But the huge majority wont tie it to some 19th century "Vegan Society" or know/remember anything about some "original definition".

Do you have any evidence for that claim? All the vegans I know use this definition.

Also, the vegan society was started in the 20th century.

[coldtea]

>Do you have any evidence for that claim?

No, but you can check it empirically and statistically.

>All the vegans I know use this definition.

Well, I know several people that self-identify as vegan (annoyingly so), who have no idea about the origins and just seen a few videos or read some articles and were convinced to try that diet.

(And of course they don't belong to any society either).

>Also, the vegan society was started in the 20th century.

Yes, confused it with the vegetarian society.

[ianai]

Actually that’s pretty close to how I decided to go vegan. I came to it from many different angles and I’m sure others do as well. Only later did I realize the close relationship between non-cruelty to veganism. (Was in a pretty libertarian area)