The illuminated medieval treatise on veins that illustrates our title today probably got it wrong too. It’s about the misuse of the word cephalic.

Cephalic is an adjective used in medicine and biology, meaning ‘pertaining to the head.’ Cephalic derives from the ancient Greek word for head, kephale.

We’ll show some of its uses in modern English words in a moment. For example, encephalitis means inflammation of the brain. Egkephalos in ancient Greek is literally ‘what’s in the head,’ that is, the brain.

But there is a cephalic vein that has nothing to do with the head.

The cephalic vein carries used blood anteriorly up the arm and then empties into the axillary vein.

So why is a vein of the arm labelled with an adjective meaning ‘of the head’? Cephalic vein is a clumsy, confusing, anatomical label. It is a 600-year-old medical mistake that still looks stupid. Well then, will those in charge of medical terminology correct the error? Not on your life!

The cephalic vein is an example of a badly named body part, and a thus confusing medical word, all based on a translator’s mistake. Some important early medical texts were in Arabic, for example, the Canon of Avicenna. He was a Persian physician named Ibn Sina ( 980-1037 CE), known in European languages as Avicenna, who wrote books collecting the medical knowledge of his times. The Canon of Avicenna was an important textbook in medieval medical schools, with more than 14 editions in the fifteenth century alone.

Avicenna celebrated on a Tunisian stamp

In Avicenna’s Arabic, this vein of the arm was named al-kifal ‘the outer (vein of the arm)’. When the Canon was translated into Latin in A.D. 1564, the translator thought al-kifal was related to Greek kephalikos ‘pertaining to the head’ and its Latin form cephalicus. He was wrong, but the naming error stuck, and became sanctified by tradition as vena cephalica in Latin and cephalic vein in medical English. This refusal to correct what is obviously an error happens too often in the conservative realms of medical nomenclature.

Here are some correct medical words derived from kephale, the Greek word for head.

en-cephal-on

en>eg ‘in’ + kephale head + on common ending of Greek neuter nouns

Egkephalon is the brain, literally, ‘the part in the head.’

 

en-cephal-itis

egkephalos ‘brain’ + -itis Greek, common suffix of medical nouns indicating inflammation of some body part

Encephalitis is any one of many inflammatory diseases of the brain, e.g., vernal encephalitis of Russia, acquired from tick bites in the spring, also passed on in infected milk and flesh.

 

electro-encephalo-gram or EEG

elektro modern meaning ‘electric’ + egkephalos ‘brain’ + -gram ‘something written or recorded’

An electroencephalogram is a graphic charting record of the brain’s electrical activity, captured by electrodes placed on the scalp. The recorded brain waves are categorized by their frequencies in alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves. The machine that makes such recordings is an electro-encephalograph.

 

hydro-cephalus

hydros Greek ‘of water’ + kephale ‘head’

Hydrocephalus is a disease characterized by excess cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. The popular name for the disorder is apt: ‘water on the brain.’

 

micro-cephal-y

micros Greek ‘small’ + kephale ‘head’ + -y noun ending

Microcephaly is a congenital irregularity in which the head is abnormally small in relation to the rest of the body. The brain of microcephalic individuals is underdeveloped, causing some mental retardation.

 

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

Egkephalos Greek ‘brain’ + -pathy Greek ‘disease’

‘Mad cow’ disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a fatal neurological disease of cattle characterized by behavioral disorders including unsteady gait and nervousness.

 

 

Bucephalus, horse of Alexander the Great

The noble steed’s name to Alexander was Boukephalos or ‘Ox-head.’ Curiously, to the first Greeks, a horse with an ox-like head was a sign of equine beauty. We don’t know why. One ancient Roman commentator, the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, says that Alexander’s horse was called Bucephalus because the great leader’s mount had the identifying mark of a bull’s head branded on one of the horse’s shoulders. And we see that mark in some sculptures and paintings of the ancient world. The problem that induces a modicum of hesitation? All such depictions were completed after Pliny published his encyclopedia.

But some ancient representations of Bucephalus show Alexander's horse with prominent eyes more like a glaring ox than the gentle ocular orbs of a horse. The idea of an ox-headed horse may have belonged to the pony-mad Dorians, who, at the end of the Bronze Age, perhaps about 1200 BCE, brought an upland northern horse culture southward deep into the reaches of the Hellenic peninsula, indeed directly to Sparta. Many of the harsh warrior traits we call Spartan today originated with the Dorians.

Ancient Greek Horse Culture Affected Naming Customs

Were those Dorian Greeks gaga about horses? One has merely to learn the meaning of many aristocratic Greek personal names, while noting that the Greek word for horse is hippos.

Hippopotamus is Greek for ‘horse of the river’ (Greek potamos ‘river’). A hippodrome is a place where horses run (dromos Greek ‘racetrack, running track for men or horses’)

As you will see below, these given names of the ancient Greek upper classes were indicative of having enough wealth to be the equivalent of a knight, that is, rich enough to supply a horse or two during wartime. The highest of the four Athenian social classes was composed of persons who could bear the rank of hippeus, sometimes translated ‘knight’ but it meant the family could afford to maintain warhorses in time of conflict.

Horse ownership jibed with ancient Greek social status. History's first, known, great comic playwright was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes. In his comedy “The Clouds” a character named Pheidippides is a pushy nouveau riche and wants to appear of aristocratic orgin. So the upstart inserts the Greek root for ‘horse’ into his peasant grandfather's name, and plain old Pheidos becomes Pheidippos, so that he, the grandson, is Pheidippides, a noble and dulcifluent moniker indeed, and phoney as a chastity affidavit from Zeus.

This elongation of a personal name by spurious addenda is still with us. Von (it means ‘of [the family of]’) may betoken a German family who were medieval knights. Some of these Reiterfamilien had magnificently pompous names for their individual family members who were christened with names like Gotboldus Benedictus Gumprecht von Hohenstolz! Yes, he was a three-foot dwarf who followed mares into the stable, but he owned the castle.

And that little German genitive preposition von was important. Consider the German pig farmer who adds von to his last name in hopes of elevating his ancestry by means of language instead of noble birth, so that Fritz Scheisskopf becomes Fritz von Scheisskopf. How much more pleasing to a not-very-bright vanity! Many a French de in a surname was added to family papers one dark night in a cowshed. In the annals of arriviste duplicity there is nothing new under the sun.

 

Greek Personal Names of Horsey Provenance

Philippos - Greek philos ‘lover’ + hippos ‘horse,’  hence lover of horses, and this bestows to posterity the still common given name Phillip, used in almost all the languages of the West and also an element in hundreds of western surnames like Philipson, Phipps, Filipacci, Philippopoulos and de la Philippe.

Hippolyta – literal Greek meaning ‘she who looses the reins of horses; developed meaning ‘a fine horsewoman, a fine rider’

Hippocrates – The father of Greek medicine has an old horse-culture tribal name that means literally ‘he who rules horses.’ The acquired meaning implies that he is a good rider or that he owns plenty of horses, a certain sign of wealth in ancient Greece. Another common Greek name that signified similar equine mastery was Hipparchos ‘horse-leader.’

Hippias – Greek ‘horse-guy’

Dorippe – Greek ‘horse gift’ from doron ‘gift’ + hippos ‘horse,’ perhaps an early dowery name for a Dorian girl about to marry

Kratippe – Greek kratos ‘power’ + hippos ‘horse’ literally ‘she who has power over horses,’ a valuable lady in ancient Greece.

Aristippos - Greek aristos ‘best’ + hippos ‘horse = ‘he who owns the best horses’

Xanthippe - That nag of a wife to the philosopher Socrates had a name that means literally ‘yellow horse’ but the semantic implication is a horse with a notably beautiful off-white coat, so a better English translation of Xanthippe would be mine, ‘buttermilk mare.’ One of history's most notorious scolds may have been the daughter of a man named Xanthippos or she may have been christened with the name because of fair skin or hair, a modest novelty in ancient Greece.

 

Extinct Horse Names

The technical names in paleozoology of several extinct ancestors of the modern horse are formed from the Greek root hippos too. Eohippus is an early horse (Greek eos ‘dawn’ ‘early time’). An extinct relative of the horse is the tiny hipparion (Greek ‘pony’ from hippos ‘horse’ + arion a common diminutive suffix for nouns, hence literally ‘small horse.’

 

Obscure Cephalic Insult Word

The quiver of insult words in English has few sharp arrows and those we possess have been shot from the bow of anger far too often. We need new verbal fletching to speed critical remarks to their target. So I will end our canter through horse words and cephalic veins with a rare but sound thwack to a dull opponent, namely the adjective oxycephalic, Greek oxys ‘sharp’ + kephalikos ‘pertaining to the head.’

If a fool with a pointy head approaches too near your meditating person, you may drive him off by saying, “Piss off, you oxycephalic twit.” Oxycephalic may refer to any moron having a pointy head. A word describing the abject condition of having a pointed head also exists in the English medical vocabulary, and that word is oxycephaly.