Body Language

The names of body parts may seem random but their origins offer fascinating insights, says Gillian Hovell

Every day, nurses discuss, monitor and treat a variety of patients' body parts. Some of those parts appear to have meaningless names that have to be blindly learnt.

But help is at hand from a surprising source: many of those apparently random names are ancient Latin words and, by peeking at their original meanings, we can inject new life into those biological tags.

Many bones, for example, were given names that simply describe their appearance: a pelvis was a bowl in day-to-day ancient Rome and this more than adequately describes the pelvis' shape. Meanwhile, a fibula, like our leg bone, was a Roman strengthening brace.

With this in mind, we can recall which tiny bone is which in the inner ear: the 'malleus' is the hammer-shaped bone ('malleable' means you can hammer something into shape), while the stirrup-shaped bone is called the 'stapes' because it's somewhere you can 'stand' (stare) your foot (pes). That leaves the inca to be the anvil which the 'hammer' appears to be striking.

Similarly, hidden Latin can help us to get to grips with the role a particular part plays: the heart's 'atrium' was a 'hallway' (atrium) and so we can remember that the blood enters there, while the 'ventricle' is deeper into the heart, being a 'little belly' (ventriculus). And our pulse 'beats a tune' (pulsare) while our 'valves' open and close like Roman folding doors (valvae).

Just as imaginatively, a number of anatomical parts were named because they reminded the Romans of the natural world around them. The clavicle, fragile and curvy, was a thin 'vine tendril' that curled onto the supports and our 'glands' are shaped like 'nuts' (glandes). That end bone of our spine, the coccyx, originally meant a 'cuckoo' due to its supposed similarity to a cuckoo's bill.

There is, of course, a wealth of purely functional titles spread around our bodies: the 'mandible', for example, is nothing more than 'the bit that chews' (mandere). And our eardrum is a 'tympanum' because a 'tambourine' was struck to make musical sounds in the frenetic ceremonies to the great mother goddess Cybele: sounds, not hands, strike our modern tympanum but its vibration enables us to hear them.

And if you find it tricky to remember exactly where certain bits belong, the start of many names can give you a clue: 'subcutaneous' fat is the fat 'under' (sub) the 'skin' (cutis) and the 'intercostal' muscles are those between (inter) the
ribs (costa).

Words that end '-cle', or whose suffix contains 'ul' or 'ell' in English are often 'little' somethings which have Roman origins. So, a 'cuticle' is a 'little skin' (cuticula) and the jugular is a blood vessel in your iugulum ('throat') which, in turn, was a 'little' 'yoke' (iugum) that you bear on your neck (as an ox does). In the same way, our cerebellum is a 'little' 'brain' (cerebrum).

Look deeper still and you can find poetry in our bodies. Our shinbone has musical links because a tibia was, long ago, a tuneful pipe made from a thin, hollow bone.

So, next time you're faced with an incomprehensible body part, remember that it might have been something quite different and memorable long ago in Ancient Rome – and anatomy will come to life.