Genesis 2:23 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Whether the primeval man was conscious of the change in himself, and of the work of the Supreme Being while it was going on, or received supernatural information of the event when he awoke, does not appear. But he is perfectly aware of the nature of her who now for the first time appears before his eyes. This is evinced in his speech on beholding her: “This, now” - in contrast with the whole animal creation just before presented to his view, in which he had failed to find a helpmeet for him - “is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh;” whence we perceive that the rib included both bone and flesh. “To this” counterpart of myself “shall be called woman;” the word in the original being a feminine form of “man,” to which we have no exact equivalent, though the word “woman” (womb-man, or wife-man), proves our word “man” to have been originally of the common gender. “Because out of a man was she taken;” being taken out of a man, she is human; and being a perfect individual, she is a female man.