The word "eugenics" is first used in 1883 by an Englishman named Sir Francis Galton, who is a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton derives the term from the Greek word eugenes, meaning "good in birth" or "good in stock." He advocates for a science of improving the human race through selective breeding.

Galton's first priority is to stop reproduction by: "imbeciles, feebleminded persons, moral imbeciles, and such inebriates, epileptics, Deaf, and dumb, and blind persons," and formerly enslaved and incarcerated people. He also suggests that talent and high social rank are hereditary.