Originally Posted by
The B Word
I’m not so sure it’s as crystal clear as you state…
Now the
avia comes from
avian/avis which is Latin for bird which derives from
aetós in Greek. Now seeing aviation is a fairly modern phenomena then the etymology of someone who flies is likely to be pretty modern - so the etymology for "aircraft pilot," 1887, from French aviateur, from Latin avis "bird" + -ateur (the common French suffix for someone who does something - like dominateur where the feminine is dominatrice or more commonly in English dominator and dominatrix). The English feminine form of aviatrix is from 1927; the earlier French aviatrice is from 1910, and an earlier English aviatress was first used in 1911.
Now those terms would have been very fresh as Raymonde de Laroche was the first woman to fly a powered aircraft as a Pilot with a licence on 8th March 1910. So really the etymology and its usage starts around that time, where aviatrice, aviatress and aviatrix are effectively correct in their own respective rights.
Another reference here on the more modern use of
-trix is here:
https://www.affixes.org/alpha/t/-trix.html
I was basing my argument on the fact that there are equally good etymological arguments for aviatrix, aviatrice and even aviatress. However, when I did some digging the first reference to la lady pilot being described as an aviatrice dated back to 1911 whereas the term aviatrix appeared to come into use post WW1 when lady pilots appeared in the news. This would have given aviatrice etymological precedence by some years, hence the last sentence in my post. However, I have just done a bit more digging and have just found the term aviatrix was also used in 1907 so that would give aviatrix precedence after all.