Push to change ‘misogynistic’ name of one of the world’s most common surgeries

[EndME]

If that were the case, «uterectomy» would have been the logical choice because «uterus» is already a Greek/Latin name that was well established in the medical literature.

But language does not evolve via logical choices and in most cases no one can claim to have understood the logic of people hundreds of years ago.

 

[richie]

For me what is more important is not the historic development of the word, but how people currently feel about it. If women feel uncomfortable with or devalued by the word ‘hysterectomy’ and its potential association with the word ‘hysteria’ then that is good grounds in itself for changing the term for this procedure.

The procedure itself is no small thing and it has so many potential ramifications both physiologically and in terms of a sense of who you are, such that anything, including the naming of the procedure, that can be done to make the woman subject to it more comfortable is a good thing.

There are many historic prejudices and inequalities that have been fossilised in contemporary language. In the 1970s and 1980s I remember sexism encoded in language was an important issue within feminism and words such as ‘female’ and ‘woman’ among many others were challenged. Perhaps it is easy for me as a man to say this, but is changing words just for the sake of it particularly useful, rather we should be asking what words now make women feel uncomfortable or devalued and change them, otherwise we could endlessly be interrogating the historic negative associations of language: the word Gael used by the Scottish Gaelic to describe themselves means foreigner; and if I remember correctly the origin of the words Wales and Welsh are linked to an old word for slave; also the modern English word slave comes from Slav or Slavic the Eastern European ethnic grouping which could be seen as insulting to them; etc.

Also changing words does not guarantee the prejudices behind them go away. You see this with words designating learning disability, where terms such as Down’s Syndrome or Special Needs were introduced to escape the pejorative implications of previous terminology become in turn used as insults themselves. Or as @Sean points out, the negative connotations inherent in the word hysteria have for some been disguised in the modern terms conversion disorder and even the superficially neutral term FND.

Gael comes from Goidel/Gaidheal which may itself have arisen from gwyddel meaning forest dweller in Welsh. Interesting that the pejorative "woodkerne" was used by Ulster Protestants of the dispossessed Gael population so "gwyddel" may have had pejorative connotations in Welsh too and your point of pejoratives losing their negative connotations is in any case sound. (There is btw a root g-vowel-l which is reflected in Fingal - white and foreign and the name Doyle dark (dubh) and foreign) relating to different types of Viking, but this is not as far as I know the source of the word Gael.
Welsh comes from the tribal name volcae, who were neighbours of Germanic speakers and whose tribal name came to mean foreign, which could easily take on the meaning of slave in the circumstances back then. So Welsh means both foreign and slave! Slav < slave would be disputed since it may derive form the Slavonic for word ("slovo" in modern Russian). There is precedent in E Europe for lingustic features giving rise to ethnic names e.g the word for German has a root nem- in Slavic languages and is also the root of the term "dumb" i.e can't speak out own lingo. "Barbarian" is also rooted in the idea of babbling incohent and incomprehensible to the Greeks.

I agree that changing a term does not necessarily get rid of pejorative meaning, since content and attitude still counts.

 

[Utsikt]

But language does not evolve via logical choices and in most cases no one can claim to have understood the logic of people hundreds of years ago.

We’re not talking about language in general, but about the naming of medical concepts that seemingly follows quite specific and logical rules.

I am quite certain that those who invented the term hysterectomy had no more regard for a relation to 'hysteria' than those inventing nephrectomy or oophorectomy.

I’m not claiming that they did. (The authors can speak for themselves).

I’m saying that avoiding the negatively loaded word and using the way more common neutral word would have been preferable at the time.

Regardless of that, because the meaning of words change over time, a name that might have been fine earlier might sound a lot worse now.

Diabetes used to be named «sugar illness» in Norway, and I think it’s a good thing that we changed it even though the name probably stems from the sweet tasting urine, and not the connection to consumption of excessive sugar.

If you invented a new -mab for treating ME/CFS, you would probably get some reactions if you decided to name it «fatigumab». If you named it like that decades ago, I would probably still like it to be changed today.