Why is the number of holes of a surface called genus? It is called "genre" in French and "Geschlecht" in German.
Just out of curiosity, I used Google to find the answer but couldn't find anything yet.
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1See Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics : Genus; the origin seems to be German. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 18 '19 at 12:49
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It is a way of characterizing a collection of (topologically) similar surfaces. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 18 '19 at 12:52
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1I always imagined that the usage was derived from the Classification of Species (as in Genus/species). After all, topological genus was introduced as a classification tool. Mind you, I have no idea where the Evolution people came up with the word. – lulu Dec 18 '19 at 12:57
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@Lulu - Exactly; "evolution people" derived it from the zoologist Carl Linnaeus that in turn derived it from Aristotle. But the "root" is the same : classification : male/female, mammals etc, orientable surfaces – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 18 '19 at 13:13
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@MauroALLEGRANZA That certainly makes sense. – lulu Dec 18 '19 at 13:14