If you were to have asked people a few years ago what sort of life they wanted, they might have said “successful” or “happy”. Today, they say they are seeking an “authentic” life. Some call this the “age of authenticity”. But what does “authentic” mean?

“Authentic” came, via Latin and French, from the Greek authentikos, meaning “original” or “genuine”. That in turn came from authentes, meaning “doer” or “perpetrator”, which derived from autos, meaning “self”. Thus the current meaning of “authentic” – true to oneself – could reflect the word’s origins.

In its earliest English uses, from the late fourteenth century, the word referred to texts that were legally valid, or that were truthful or accurate. The latter sense can be found in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, where the poet, in a dream, meets a knight. The knight has lost his lady and tells the poet about her, referring to various exemplary wives of myth, whose stories, he says, are autentike.