There
are over 600 muscles in the human body. Identifying these
six hundred muscles is a daunting task. Furthermore, the
names of these muscles seem foreign to most of us. Most
of our modern anatomical terms were developed throughout
the mid- to late-1500s when many anatomists were performing
dissections of the human body. (The history of anatomy
and dissection is more fully discussed in The Kansas
School Naturalist, Vol. 38, No. 1.) As a result of
the influence of the early Greek and Roman anatomists,
muscles were named using Latin and Greek roots. Thus,
if you have some appreciation for Latin or Greek roots,
you would have an advantage in knowing the function and/or
location of a muscle in the body as a result of its name.
How
Muscles are Named
Muscles
can be named according to the direction their fibers run,
their size, where they are found in the body, what bones
they attach to, what the muscle looks like, where it is
in relation to certain bones, and their function within
the body. Often the name of a muscle contains combinations
of each of the above.
