Sorority Rituals - Reflections On Rites of ... - Mari Ann Callais

Sorority Terminology
Understanding terminology and the context in which terms are used is important to
understanding this study. For example, some of the national organizations refer to themselves as
women’s fraternities and others refer to themselves as sororities. Owen (1991) writes that all of
the women’s groups were called fraternities in the beginning because no other word existed to
refer to a single sex group of women other than the word fraternity. Then, in 1882, Gamma Phi
Beta was named a “sorority," a coined word suggested by their advisor who was a professor of
Latin, and who thought the word “fraternity” was not appropriate for a group of young ladies
(Owen, 1991). "The word sorority is found in the 16 th century works of More, possibly from the
medieval Latin sororitas, or adapted directly from the Latin soror, or sister" (Johnson, 1972, p.
60). Many of the other groups had already been incorporated as fraternities and decided to
continue to call themselves women’s fraternities. In 1909, the National Panhellenic Conference
revised its constitution to use the term “women's fraternity” throughout. This terminology is still
in use today. However, so as not to confuse the reader with varying terminology, this study uses
the term sorority to refer to all member groups of NPC.
For the purposes of this study, when reference is made to ritual it is primarily referring to
the initiation ceremony. The common term used by sorority women for the initiation ceremony is
ritual. The term ritual is used throughout this study with the understanding that the reference is
primarily to the initiation ceremony because of the undergraduate's understanding of that
particular ceremony and possibly their lack of understanding of the connectedness of the other
ceremonies.
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