Nomina Anatomica

Nomina Anatomica (NA) was the international standard on human anatomic terminology from 1955 until it was replaced by Terminologia Anatomica in 1998.

In the late nineteenth century some 50,000 terms for various body parts were in use. The same structures were described by different names, depending (among other things) on the anatomist’s school and national tradition. Vernacular translations of Latin and Greek, as well as various eponymous terms, were barriers to effective international communication. There was disagreement and confusion among anatomists regarding anatomical terminology.

The first and last entries in the following table are not NA editions, but they are included for the sake of continuity.

Although these early editions were authorized by different bodies, they are sometimes considered part of the same series.

The International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA) is the international body representing anatomical societies from throughout the world. The First Federative International Congress of Anatomy met in Geneva in 1903.

The BNA and its various revisions (BR, JNA) remained standard international terminology until 1955.

It contained 5,640 terms, of which 4,286 were unchanged from the BNA.

The committee favored the BNA's orthograde orientation (anatomical position) over the JNA's pronograde orientation, which led to a schism with veterinary anatomists, and the subsequent publication of the Nomina Anatomica Veterinaria in 1968.

Around the time of the Twelfth Congress (London, 1985), a dispute arose over the editorial independence of the IANC. The IANC did not believe that their work should be subject to the approval of IFAA Member Associations.

The types of discussion underlying this dispute are illustrated in an article by Roger Warwick, then Honorary Secretary of the IANC:

What declined, however, was the influence of the IANC on anatomical terminology. The IANC published a sixth edition of Nomina Anatomica, but it was never approved by the IFAA.

Instead, at the Thirteenth Congress (Rio de Janeiro, 1989), the IFAA created a new committee – the Federative Committee on Anatomical Terminology (FCAT). The FCAT took over the task of revising international anatomical terminology. The result was the publication, in 1998, of a “new, updated, simplified and uniform anatomical terminology,” the Terminologia Anatomica (TA) . The IANC was acknowledged in this work as follows:

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