Why Doesn’t the Cephalic Vein Go to the Head?

[I recently came across a blog post I’d written for my anatomy/physiology students. It was kind of interesting, so I thought I’d post it here.]

Usually a vein or artery’s name helps you find where it is located. For example, the brachiocephalic vein supplies the arm (“brachium“) and head (“cephalicus“). The radial artery is next to the radius, and the digital artery supplies the digit, or finger.

This is all well and good–unless you’re talking about the cephalic vein. If its name made sense, it would supply the head. But it’s nowhere near the head: it’s hanging out in the upper arm. What gives?

The true meaning of the word was literally lost in translation. It started out logically enough: the Persian doctor Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD) called the vein the “outer” or “al-kifal” vein. Years later when his book “The Canon of Avicenna” was being translated from Arabic into Latin, the translator mistakenly changed “al-kifal” to “cephalicus.”^[1]

Whoops! “Cephalic” is a centuries-old typo. But at least it shows you how long people have been studying anatomy!

1. Casselman, B. (2007). The Vein with the Wrong Name. Retrieved from http://www.billcasselman.com/unpublished_works/cephalic_vein.htm