לַבְלַב (lavlav) — pancreas
Etymology
When the Hebrew language was revived, most internal organs presented no naming problem. The stomach (qevah), intestines (me'ayim), liver (kaved), and kidneys (kelayot) are all in the Bible; Arabic cognates confirmed identifications. The spleen (tekhol) appears in the Mishnah and again Arabic (tahl) clinches it. The gallbladder appears in Mishnaic Hebrew as marah, and the phrase kis ha-marah ("bile pouch") entered modern Hebrew from Hebrew translations of Maimonides. But three organs — the appendix, the duodenum, and the pancreas — had no names with Arabic parallels, and required more effort.
The appendix received its modern Hebrew name toseftan ("appendage-thing") in 1927 from the Jewish-American physician Asher Goldin, who coined it for a Hebrew medical reference book (Refu'ah) he edited in New York. The name is a calque of the Latin appendix vermiformis ("worm-shaped appendage"), matching the Arabic loan-translation za'idah dudiyyah. For the duodenum, Goldin again supplied the name: trisaryon, from Aramaic trisar ("twelve"), a calque of the Greek dōdekasdaktulōn ("twelve fingers wide"), which is also how the Arabic translation ithna 'ashar ("twelve") works.
For the pancreas, the story is stranger. The scientific name pankreās was coined by the Greek physician Rufus of Ephesus in the early 2nd century CE — probably from Greek pan ("all") and kreas ("flesh"). The name passed into Latin and was adopted by most European languages as-is. Arabic medical usage in Egypt borrowed it phonetically as bankrīyās, though the Cairo Academy of the Arabic Language coined the alternative mu'athhkalah ("the stuck-on organ"), which never gained traction.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda spent decades reading Hebrew texts from every period, hunting for rare words to rescue for the reviving language. In one such reading — a 14th-century Hebrew-Persian dictionary, Sefer HaMelitza by Shlomo ben Shmuel of Kanaurganj (today in Turkmenistan) — he found the entry lavlav, defined as "the soft flesh on the knetah." The Persian word for the object (ba'rot) was lost and untranslatable. The Hebrew definition was vague: a soft, fleshy body located on or near the knetah. The knetah (or kneta) appears several times in rabbinic literature, where context suggests it is some part of the intestines — possibly the duodenum. If so, a soft fleshy organ attached to the duodenum is a plausible description of the pancreas.
Ben-Yehuda consulted his friend Dr. Aharon Meir Mazia, and together they concluded the lavlav in the dictionary was the pancreas. Ben-Yehuda also claimed — and this is where the story gets murky — that Palestinian Arabs called the organ lavlūb in spoken Arabic. He cited this as proof that the medieval Hebrew word had survived locally in continuous use. No independent corroboration of this Arabic usage has been found. It is possible the word was in local use in Ben-Yehuda's time but later fell out; it is also possible that in spoken Palestinian Arabic lavlūb means clitoris, which would explain both the word's currency in one domain and the confusion about the other. Ben-Yehuda and Mazia may have been mistaken or misled. Either way, lavlav stuck.
Key Quotes
"בשר הרך שעל הכנתה. בארות" — שלמה בן שמואל, ספר המליצה, המאה ה-14 (הגדרת "לבלב")
Timeline
- 2nd century CE: Rufus of Ephesus coins pankreās (Greek "all-flesh")
- 14th century: Shlomo ben Shmuel of Kanaurganj records lavlav in Sefer HaMelitza as "soft flesh on the knetah"
- Late 19th – early 20th century: Ben-Yehuda finds lavlav in his dictionary research; consults Dr. Mazia; identifies it as pancreas
- 1927: Dr. Asher Goldin coins toseftan (appendix) and trisaryon (duodenum) in his New York medical reference book Refu'ah
- 20th century: Lavlav established as the standard Hebrew term for pancreas
- Present: Lavlav used universally; the identification's shaky evidence is unknown to most speakers
Related Words
- תּוֹסֶפְתָּן — "appendix" (coined 1927 by Goldin; calque of Latin appendix vermiformis)
- תְּרֵיסַרְיוֹן — "duodenum" (coined 1927 by Goldin; from Aramaic trisar, twelve)
- כְּנָתָה — the unidentified anatomical part mentioned in rabbinic sources; possibly the duodenum
- פַּנְקְרֵאָס — the Greek/international scientific name for the same organ