History of Anatomical Nomenclature

The origin of the current international medical nomenclature has its roots in the medical writings from the classical Greek period. The most prominent figure in this period is Hippocrates of Cos (ca. 460-377 B.C.E.). His extensive medical treatises contained names for all major parts of the human body. The conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.) created an extensive Greek empire involving most of the civilizations of eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Egypt, and Greek became the international language of scholarly activity. In 146 B.C.E., the combined forces of Greece were defeated by the Roman army at the Battle of Corinth, and Greece became a part of the Roman empire. Greek, however, remained the language of scholarly writing, and the major medical works during the Roman Empire were written in Greek. The bulk of anatomical terminology used to the present day is derived from the extensive anatomical and medical writings of Galen (130-200 C. E.), a physician who practiced in Rome. Anatomical Greek terms from these writings were subsequently translated or transliterated into Latin, the official language of the Roman empire, which eventually replaced Greek as the international language of scholarly writings. These Latinized terms along with the vernacular Latin terms for the major parts of the human body form the basis of current anatomical terminology.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 C.E., there were no important medical writings in the West for the next seven centuries, and most scholarly work was done in the Eastern Roman Empire. With the rise of Islam during this period and the conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire, Arabic became the became the international scholarly language in the East. Galen's works were translated into Arabic, and many Arabic anatomical terms were introduced. During this time, knowledge of Greek declined in the West. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arabic medical writings were translated into Latin which were used as the basic medical texts in the West. In the 15th and 16th centuries, knowledge of Greek was revived in the West during the Renaissance. Further changes were made to Latin terminology based on the original Greeks writings, and it is this form of Latin that is used in current international anatomical terminologies.

The first known book on anatomical nomenclature was written in Greek around 100 C.E. by Rufus of Ephesus. There was, however, no standardized international anatomical nomenclature, and anatomical names proliferated in the following centuries becoming a mixture of Arabic, Greek, and Latin terms. Synonyms and eponyms were added. By 1800, anatomical nomenclature consisted of a confusing array of 50,000 terms, and the need for a standardized international anatomical nomenclature became increasingly apparent. The first standardized anatomical nomenclature, Basle Nomina Anatomica (B.N.A.), was produced in 1895 by the German Anatomical Society. B.N.A. consisted of a list of 5000 anatomical terms. All terms were in Latin with each body part having only one name. Eponyms were avoided. It was realized that further revisions of this work would be necessary. During the first half of the 20th century, international congresses of anatomical societies from various countries proposed changes to B.N.A. The first widely accepted revision, Nomina Anatomica (N.A.), was published in 1956. Periodic revisions of Nomina Anatomica were published with the 6th and last edition published in 1989.

It was recognized that the anatomical nomenclature should be consistent with histological and embryological nomenclatures. In 1989 at the 13th International Congress of Anatomy, a new committee was established, the Federative Committee on Anatomical Terminology (FCAT), which revised the terminology and structure of Nomina Anatomica. This new nomenclature, Terminologia Anatomica (T.A.), was published in 1998 and soon became accepted as the international standard for anatomical terminology.