How the 5 Fingers Got Their Names
You use your hands everyday to do thousands of things, but have you ever wondered why you refer to your fingers by names like "thumb" and "pinky"?
The origins of body part names can be hard to pin down because of the way language evolves, but here's what we know about why thumbs are thumbs and why little fingers are pinkies.
1. THUMBDifferent from the other four digits in that it is shorter and wider and only has two phalanges instead of three, the thumb earned its name from a description of its physical characteristics in relation to its neighbors.
In medical terminology, the word for thumb is pollex. The term “thumb” was first used before the 12th century and is believed to have come from the Proto-Indo-European term tum, meaning “to swell,” which makes the thumb "the swollen one."
2. INDEX/POINTER FINGERIndex comes from the Latin indicō, which means “to point out,” which is also where the term “pointer” comes into play.
3. MIDDLE FINGERIt has the most literal meaning of all. Less commonly referred to as the long or tall finger, the digitus medius manus sits in the center of the hand, right between the digitus secondus manus and the ring finger. I wonder how the middle finger became an offensive gesture.
4. RING FINGERThe origin of the term "ring finger" dates back to 2nd century Egypt and has to do with the heart.
Egyptians believed that there was a vein in the fourth finger, known as the lover's vein, that was connected to the heart, an untrue theory that Romans also came to believe many years later. To signify that a man had a hold of a woman's heart, he would put a ring on it, a practice that lives on today.
5. PINKY FINGERPinkie was used by Scots to refer to something small, as explained in An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language by John Jamieson, published in 1808. The term comes from the Dutch pink, meaning "small."
