The word shaman comes from the Tungusic languages of Siberia, where saman (often written šamán) named one particular person in one particular community: the one who could enter an altered state on purpose, travel to the spirit world on behalf of others, and come back with something the community could use. It is usually translated as “one who knows”. It was never a self-given title, and it was never a general word for a spiritual person.
Almost everything that word carries today was added later, in Europe, by people who had never met a saman. That is worth knowing before you use it about yourself or about anyone else.
What does the word “shaman” mean?
Shaman means “one who knows”, from the Evenki word saman. The knowing meant is not book knowledge. It is direct, first-hand knowledge of the spirit world, gained by going there and returning. In the Evenki context the saman was a practical specialist: someone the village called when a person fell ill, when the hunt failed, when a soul was believed to have wandered, or when the dead needed accompanying.
Three things are built into that original meaning and they tend to get lost in translation:
- It is relational. A saman existed in relation to a community that named him or her. There was no private practice.
- It is functional. The word described what someone did, not what someone believed or felt.
- It is conferred. The community decided, over years, whether the work held up. You did not decide.
Where does the word “shaman” come from?
It travelled from Siberia into European languages through Russian. Russian traders, soldiers and exiles in Siberia picked up the Tungusic word, wrote it down as шаман, and from there it entered German, Dutch, French and English in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch diplomat Nicolaes Witsen included a drawing of a Tungus practitioner in his 1692 book on northern and eastern Tartary, and that image did a great deal to fix the word in the European imagination.
| Stage | Form | What it referred to |
|---|---|---|
| Tungusic (Evenki), Siberia | saman | A named specialist who journeys to the spirits for the community |
| Russian, 17th century | шаман | Borrowed as a description of Siberian religious practitioners |
| European travel writing, 1690s onward | schaman, chaman, shaman | An exotic figure, often described as a conjuror or a fraud |
| Anthropology, 19th and 20th century | shaman | A cross-cultural category applied far beyond Siberia |
| Western spiritual culture, since about 1980 | shaman | Anyone practising drumming, journeying or plant work, often self-declared |
Is the etymology of “shaman” settled?
No. Linguists still disagree about where the Tungusic word itself came from, and honest sources say so. There are two main positions.
The first holds that saman is native Tungusic, built on a root meaning something like “to know” or connected to the agitated movement of trance. The second, argued in the early twentieth century by Berthold Laufer and later by the ethnographer Sergei Shirokogoroff, traces it to the Pali samana (Sanskrit shramana), a word for a wandering Buddhist ascetic, carried north through Central Asia along with Buddhist influence. Most linguists today lean towards the native Tungusic explanation, but the question is genuinely open. Britannica’s entry on shamanism notes the same split.
I find the uncertainty useful rather than frustrating. It is a reminder that the word arrived in our language secondhand, through people who were describing something they did not practise.
Why did one Siberian word end up describing practices worldwide?
Because scholars needed a label, and this one was already in circulation. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries anthropologists noticed that trance, spirit contact and healing on behalf of a community appear in Mongolia, Nepal, the Amazon, the Arctic, southern Africa and much of Indigenous North America. Rather than learn every local term, they extended the Siberian word to all of it.
Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951) sealed that decision by defining shamanism as a technique rather than a religion: the controlled journey of the soul. Michael Harner then took the comparative idea into practice in The Way of the Shaman (1980), stripping the method down to what appeared to repeat across cultures and teaching it to Westerners. That approach is what most people in Europe and North America now learn, and it has a name of its own. I have written about the distinction in core shamanism versus traditional shamanism.
The convenience came at a cost. A Nepali jhankri, a Sámi noaidi and a Xhosa sangoma each have their own name, training, lineage and obligations. Calling all of them shamans flattens real differences and makes the practice sound like one worldwide tradition, which it is not.
Can you call yourself a shaman?
In the original sense, no. The word was conferred by a community over years of tested work, not chosen. Someone trained in Western shamanic method, however sincerely, is not standing inside an Evenki village that named them. This is why many careful teachers use “shamanic practitioner” instead, and why I use it about myself.
It is not false modesty. It is accuracy, and accuracy protects the people who come to you.
| Term | What it honestly claims | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Shaman | A role given by a community within a living tradition | Practitioners named as such inside that culture |
| Shamanic practitioner | Trained in shamanic method, working with clients | Most Western practitioners, including me |
| Student of shamanism | Learning the practice, journeying for oneself | Anyone in the first years of the work |
| Healer, guide, energy worker | Related work, no claim on the Siberian word | People whose method sits outside shamanic journeying |
What changed for me when I stopped using the word
Years ago, at a gathering in Portugal, an older woman asked me plainly what I was. I said the word. Shaman. She looked at me for a long moment and asked, “Who gave you that?” I had no answer. Nobody had given it to me. I had picked it up because it was the word people recognised and because it sounded like it settled the question of whether I was any good.
I stopped using it that week. What surprised me was that nothing was lost. Clients did not care about the title. They cared whether I could stay steady while they fell apart, and whether what I brought back from a journey landed as true for them. The word had been doing work in my own head, not in the room. Letting it go put my attention back where it belonged, on the practice itself and on whether it was actually helping anyone.
Does the word still matter?
Yes, though not as a badge. It matters as a piece of history that tells you where this work comes from and to whom it belongs. Knowing that saman is Evenki, that it reached us through Russian traders and Dutch travel books, and that scholars still argue about its root, keeps you from treating shamanism as a free-floating spiritual style with no address.
The practice is available to anyone willing to learn it seriously. I have written about that honestly in can anyone learn shamanism. The title is a different matter, and it is fine to leave it where it was born. If you want the fuller picture of the role itself rather than the word, start with what is a shaman.
Frequently asked questions
It comes from the Evenki word saman and is usually translated as one who knows. The knowing meant is direct experience of the spirit world, gained by journeying there on behalf of a community.
No. It is Siberian, from the Tungusic languages, and reached English through Russian. Indigenous North American peoples have their own terms for their own healers and ceremonial leaders, and many object to shaman being used for them.
Not in the original sense. The title was conferred by a community after years of tested work, never self-chosen. Most Western practitioners, including me, use shamanic practitioner instead, which describes the training honestly without claiming a role from another culture.
A shaman holds a named role inside a living tradition that recognises them. A shamanic practitioner is trained in shamanic method, usually core shamanism, and works with clients without claiming that traditional role.
The word itself is not offensive. Using it as a self-given title, or applying it to Indigenous people who use their own terms, is what causes offence. Naming the practice accurately solves most of the problem.
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, through Russian accounts of Siberia and European travel literature. Nicolaes Witsen’s 1692 book on northern and eastern Tartary was one of the earliest widely read sources to picture and name a Tungus practitioner.
About the author
Carolin Mallmann is a shamanic practitioner and teacher based in Portugal. She has worked with clients in healing sessions and trainings for more than a decade and founded One Shamanism to teach the practice without mystification. Read more about Carolin and her path here.
