NOMEN EX INVENTORE: LATIN NOMENCLATURAL STRATEGIES IN NICOLAUS STENO’S OBSERVATIONES ANATOMICAE (1662)

Abstract

This article analyzes the Latin nomenclatural strategies employed in Nicolaus Steno's Observationes anatomicae (1662) as a terminological text at a pivotal juncture in the history of anatomical naming. Through close textual analysis of the original Latin edition (Wellcome Library copy, 1662), the study examines the nomenclatural strategies in the main treatise, the epistemological framework articulated in the preface, and the polemic context of the work's composition. The analysis reveals a central paradox: in the preface, Steno is the first to explicitly articulate the epistemology of personal discovery that renders eponymous naming logically necessary, yet in the main treatise he consistently avoids eponymous nomenclature, describing the parotid duct through functional and topographic periphrases without fixing a proper name. The term ductus Stenonianus is shown to be a post factum act of the scientific community, resulting from a resolved priority dispute with Gerard Blasius, verified through the original text of the 1662 edition. A further significant finding concerns the systematic use of glandula as a central classificatory category (89 occurrences), which makes Observationes anatomicae a prototype of a new physiology of secretion rather than a mere report on a single discovery. The article situates Steno's contribution within the broader trajectory from Bauhin's descriptive systematization (1605) to the institutional codification of the Basel Nomenclature (1895) and the elimination of all eponyms in the Terminologia Anatomica (1998), arguing that Steno is not the initiator of the eponymic turn in anatomical nomenclature but its first philosophical articulator.