Eponyms And Their Latinization In Disease And Syndrome Names: Grammar, Convention, And Standardization

Abstract

Eponymous disease and syndrome names remain widespread in clinical speech, education, and the biomedical literature, even as modern classifications increasingly prefer descriptive or mechanism-based terms. Alongside English and other national-language forms, many medical education traditions preserve a Latin layer for eponyms, most visibly in constructions such as morbus + surname or syndroma + surname, as well as in Neo-Latin spellings that use the genitive to mark attribution. This article examines how eponyms are Latinized in the naming of diseases and syndromes, why multiple competing Latinization patterns exist, and how these patterns interact with contemporary recommendations to reduce possessive forms in English. Using a qualitative linguistic method (morphological and orthographic analysis) on representative eponymic labels drawn from scholarly discussions of Latin medical terminology and eponym formation, we identify the principal Latinization strategies: genitive singular forms that follow a Latin head noun, apostrophe-marked “main eponyms” that avoid declension, and hybrid or exception patterns motivated by pronunciation and international variation. Results show that Latinization is guided less by “pure” classical rules than by professional convention and practical readability, yet it still relies on recognizable Latin grammatical signals (especially the genitive) that help convey attribution and improve interpretability across languages. We discuss implications for teaching medical Latin, harmonizing terminology in multilingual settings, and improving bibliographic retrieval where possessive/nonpossessive alternation remains a persistent problem.