Revisiting the Latin vocabulary of Terminologia Histologica: I. Nouns

1 INTRODUCTION

Two more editions of NH (IANC, 1983, 1989) and Terminologia Histologica (TH; FICAT, 2008) were subsequently published as revised nomenclatures, without significant review of the Latin words used in previous editions. To aid those preparing a revised edition of TH, in 2016, one of us (P.E.N.) gave a report to the Latin subcommittee and Histology working group of the Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT) about its Latin vocabulary. The present article is an expansion of a part of the 2016 report to FIPAT.

Despite the certainty that some will find a Latin microanatomical nomenclature anachronistic and the probability that few would utilize it, the official policy of the IFAA is that its Latin terminologies, not English terms, are intended to be the basis for creation of equivalent nomenclatures in modern languages. Thus, it is important that the Latin used in the IFAA terminologies is authentic, and that the words are simply constructed so that the terms are easy to translate or match to existing equivalents in other languages. Latin equivalents of words derived from Greek sources in vernacular terms should be constructed directly from Greek sources, as if in a process parallel to the creation of the original vernacular terms.

Of course, there are exceptions to these guidelines.

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

3 RESULTS

TH (FICAT, 2008) contains 993 nouns and substantives (Table 1). Most of these had been used previously in TA (FCAT, 1998) or NH (IANC, 1977, 1983, 1989); however, almost a third (313) were new to the international anatomical and microanatomical nomenclature. Nine nouns that were used in both TH and TA were identified as problematic (Table 2). Most of these problems were addressed during the creation of TA2 (FIPAT, 2019) and were also discussed in previous publications.

Many more problems were identified among nouns in TH that had not been previously used in TA. Many nouns (133) in TH have endings that differ in gender and/or declension from those that would be expected based on their derivation from ancient Greek words (Table 3). All but 10 of these problematic nouns are due to mistreatment of just three Greek nouns (γένος [“genos”], κύτος [“cytos”], and μέρος [“meros”]). The feminine nouns χώρα [“chōra”] and γαμετή [“gametē”] were favored over χῶρος [“chōros”] and γαμέτης [“gametēs”] in Table 3 because etymological and lexicographical analyses indicate that they are primary to the masculine nouns, either in derivation and/or usage.

TH contains 19 substantives that were new to the international anatomical and microanatomical nomenclature. The substantives acidum, adnexum, depositum, and residuum are acceptable for use in the IFAA terminologies because they are attested in classical Latin. The novel substantives in Table 4 were generally considered to represent informal shortenings of terms by omitting the original head noun, leaving an adjective or participle to serve as a noun.

Twenty Latin nouns displayed simple errors in spelling, gender, or declension (Table 5). Finally, 16 nouns with issues that are less straightforward are presented in Table 6. Some are questionably constructed; others may not be the best option among similar words for use in TH.

4 DISCUSSION

A review of the Latin nouns used in TH revealed that almost 20% (193/993) were associated with linguistic problems, especially in the areas of orthography, gender and declension. The most common problem identified with the nouns in TH was the changing of the gender and/or declension of nouns borrowed from Greek (Table 3). This high prevalence was partially due to the large number of names of cell types (110) that are compound nouns containing a terminal morpheme derived from κύτος (“a hollow”). In NH and TH, this morpheme was translated as cytus and words ending in this morpheme were treated as second declension masculine nouns. Since κύτος is, in fact, a third declension neuter noun, an -e ending is appropriate. The resulting word X-cyte is declined like rete and declive. Other nouns that should be corrected to show their descent from third declension neuter nouns include lipochromum, collagenum, sarcomerum, and centromerus. These should be lipochroma, collagene, sarcomere, and centromere, respectively. Similarly, kinetochorus, osteoclastus, chondroclastus, dendritum, and gametus should be reconstructed as first declension nouns (kinetochora, osteoclasta, chondroclasta, dendrita, and gameta, respectively).

Most of the remaining problems consist of a few examples of each of the issues previously found in studies of the Latin anatomical nomenclature—replacement of a digraph with a single vowel (e.g., adhesio, leukemia, and spherula), not recognizing uncommon genders in first and second declension nouns (e.g., prostata and periodus), altering gender in diminutives (e.g., fasciolus), use of a plural form as a singular noun (e.g., haematia and adnexa), adding an -um ending at the end of nouns with -on endings (e.g., axonum, connexonum, and nephronum), introduction of new substantives (Table 4, for example, collaterales and neurotransmittens), and simple typographical errors (e.g., amyllinum and pachytema).

The Latin microanatomical terminology contains nouns that show evidence of derivation from modern languages and Anglicization. There is a long history of complaints about the quality of the anatomical vocabulary. In the Renaissance, it was at first “too Arabic” or “barbaric,” and later, “too Greek.” As a rule, in the modern Latin anatomical vocabulary, common words come from Latin, and more technical words are either borrowed from Greek or constructed from Greek and Latin morphemes. Most technical words borrowed from modern languages and “Latinized” for use in TH are, in fact, derived from ancient Greek and classical Latin; however, an authentic Latin technical vocabulary should be derived, as much as possible, directly from classical languages. There are, of course, exceptions, such as enamelum, which was derived from the English noun enamel. Enamel and the medieval Latin word smaltum share origins in an ancient Germanic language (Panes et al., 2020).

The Latin nomenclature of Terminologia Anatomica contains few words not derived from classical Latin or ancient Greek (e.g., enamelum, griseus, nucha). But even the classical languages borrowed from other languages (e.g., cuniculus, σησαμοειδής [“sēsamoidēs”]), so there is no insurmountable impediment to adopting and naturalizing technical words from modern languages that do not have classical roots. Cytosol may be beyond the pale in a Latin terminology (see Table 6), but a Latin equivalent of the English contraction “surfactant” (surfactantum) may be more practical than a Latin translation of “surface active agent” or of the French or Spanish substantives, “tensioactif” and “tensoactivo”, respectively. Similarly, colloidum, a Neo-Latin word used at least since the 19th century in English and German for materia medica containing plant extracts or heavy metals, is a convenient shortening of substantia colloidea for the Latin name of the thyroid colloid.

Relative to NH, TH contains a large number of names of proteins and other macromolecules. Many of their English names have -in or -an endings, which are naturally converted to -inum and -anum in the Latin nomenclature. Most other new Latin nouns should be derived from their Greek or Latin origins, not simply created by slapping on a stereotypically Latin ending, such as -us, -a, or -um, on an English word. Many nouns in TH (128) contain one of six morphemes that have -us or -um endings of the second declension even though the original Greek words are either first declension masculine or third declension neuter nouns (Table 3). These compound nouns are reminiscent of low comedy in which vowels are added to English words to parody Italian or Spanish. Alternatively, one could think of the name of Pontius Pilate's friend in Monty Python's Life of Brian. These and several other Neo-Latin nouns in TH appear to be derived from German, English, French, or other modern languages, that is, indirectly from Greek. Deriving the Latin words directly from Greek often results in words that look more familiar to speakers of Romance and Germanic languages, and less stereotypically “Latin” (Table 7). It is ironic that the IANC's aversion to philological “pedantry” appears to have thwarted its desire to have the new Latin terms resemble modern vernacular terms.

After some of the current problems and inconsistencies of TH have been addressed in the second edition (Neumann & Neumann, 2021, 2023; Varga et al., 2018, 2019, 2020), we hope that it will become a useful tool for a wider group of scientific and medical professionals.

The umanisti (“humanists”) were the teachers and scholars of Classical Greek and Latin literature in Renaissance Italy. They criticized the barbarous Latin of the Universities, tried to revive the Latin of Cicero and Caesar, and espoused the principle of ad fontes (“[back] to the sources”). If the goal is to create and maintain a Latin microanatomical terminology, the language used would ideally follow conventions of classical Latin and resemble modern cognates. Thus, we take up the cry “ad fontes” again.