Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 1997/04/23
Subject: Re: Toes have no names?

Mark <equinox44@mindspring.com> asks whether to devour a story about
someone recently standardizing the names of toes.  This is probably
related to the _New Scientist_'s column formerly known as ARIADNE (and
since renamed "Feedback") in the issue of 6 April 1991.

  "A doctor at the Yale University School of Medicine has been
  thinking about the curious affair of the toes.  He has written,
  that unlike the fingers, which all have names --- digitus
  pollicis, indicis, medius, annularis, and minimus --- the toes
  are all anonymous, except the big toe, hallux, though they are
  ignominiously numbered.  Unfair, he maintains, and liable to cause
  confusion.  He therefore suggests names, doing away with hallux
  and substituting porcellus fori.  Then the other toes, moving
  across from the big toe, should become p. domi, p. carnivorus,
  p. non voratus, and p. plorans domum.

  "My Latin not being up to this, I was glad to see that he had
  provided a translation.  Porcellus he uses as the diminutive form
  of porcus, a pig.  Light breaks.  The toes are then identified as
  piglet at market, piglet at home, meat-eating piglet, piglet
  having not eaten, and piglet crying homeward."

c...@midway.uchicago.edu (Christine Malcom) was kind enough to note
that the 5th and latest edition of _Nomina Anatomica_ doesn't mention
any action by the International Congress of Anatomists on this, but
that's from 1983, so they could hardly have the latest information.

Given the date of the column, I suspect this is all a prank played
on or by the _New Scientist_, and that the suggestion that this
terminology was adopted is a product of the rumor mill.  But perhaps
you may get more information from Medline or the kind folks at
feedb...@newscientist.com.

Dan Hoey                                    [ posted and e-mailed ]
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil