Professional terminology is commonplace, particularly in the fields of mathematics,
medicine, veterinary and natural sciences. The use of the terminology
can be international, as it is with Anatomical Terminology (AT). In the early age
of modern education, anatomists adopted Latin as the international language
for AT. However, at the end of the 20th century, the English language became
more predominant around the world.
It can be said that the AT is a specific collection of scientific terms. One of the
major flaws in early AT was that body structures were described by varying
names, while some of the terms was irrational in nature, and confusing. At this
time, different international committees were working on preparing a unified
final version of the AT, which in the end consisted of 5,640 terms (4,286 originally
from the Basle Nomina Anatomica, BNA). Also, each country wanted to
have its own nomenclature. In order to accomplish this, each country based
their nomenclature on the international AT, and then translated it into their
own language.
The history of the Polish Anatomical Terminology (PAT) is unique, and follows
the events of history. It was first published in 1898, at a time when its neighbours
partitioned the territory of Poland. During 150 years, the Polish culture
and language was under the Russification and Germanization policy. It is
important to note, that even with such difficult circumstances, the PAT was
the first national AT in the world. The PAT was a union of the accepted first
BNA in Latin and the original Polish anatomical equivalents. This union formed
the basis for theoretical and clinical medicine in Poland. (Folia Morphol 2008;
67: 87–97
