WONDERING WHAT ‘-ONYMS’ ARE?

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Have you ever wondered what onyms are?  ..

In my previous posts, I have discussed about Burkitt lymphoma. The lymphoma got the name of the doctor who described it acknowledging him for his contributions. Also, we saw Epstein Barr virus got its name from two scientists who first cultured it. We all know there are various diseases named after scientists or doctors who described it. 

Do diseases are named only after the discoverer or the scientist only? Or is there anything else?

Its interesting to know that some are named after patients in whom it was described first, some after place or hospital where it was first described. Also some names are derived from foods, due to their resemblance with the food.

I was reading about the various eponyms in hematology and I learnt that there are other –onyms also and I found it to be interesting. I thought why not share this with you also. And hence this post.

The –onym, comes from the Greek word ‘onyma’ meaning ‘name’.

There are various –onyms, eponyms, toponyms, mythonyms and backronyms.

Eponymization  is to honour a person who made significant contribution in that specific discovery or invention.  Its indeed considered to be the highest standard of acknowledgement in science.  Wow it feels so good, when something is named after us and the whole word uses that, indeed a great acknowledgement. An advantage of eponyms is that they can be used for a complex and very complicated concept in one word. But disadvantage is that they have no meaning, which makes it more difficult to remember. Also, eponyms may take longer time to get accepted.

Eponyms can be further subdivided into toponyms, mythonyms and backronyms.
Lets see what each means.

Toponyms are terms named after geographical place. Examples are pathological hemoglobins like Hemoglobin G Philadelphia, Hemoglobin M Boston. Bornholm disease, a viral infection, is named after the Danish island Bornholm, where early cases occurred. Ebola hemorrhagic fever, caused by Ebola virus is named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa, where it was first recognized.

Mythonyms are terms named after Greek Mythology. Example- Janus Kinase, family of intracellular non-receptor tyrosine kinases. The name is derived from the two-faced Roman God of beginnings, endings and duality, Janus, because the Janus kinase possesses two near identical phosphate transferring domains.

Backronyms is just one term, developed for educational purposes as mnemonic. For example, APGAR score, scoring system  used in newborn babies to see the effects of obstetric anesthesia. It was developed by Virginia Apgar. Later they developed a pneumonic using the same APGAR.  It became a bacronym, A- Appearance (Colour), P –Pulse (Heart Rate), G- Grimace (Reflex irritability), A-Activity (Muscle tone) and R- Respiration.

I hope you will also find it interesting.

We will see various –onyms in hematology in my upcoming posts.

References:

Dzuganova B. English medical terminology- different ways of forming medical terms.  JAHR.  2013.
                                                                                   

                                                                                   Written By Dr.Priyavadhana B

Comments

  1. Unknown14 June 2020 at 12:33

    interesting, please continue to update us more abt it dear priya.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown14 June 2020 at 14:50

    Hey Priya..Thanks for enlightening us about such things..Keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete

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