5 Names

Achilles Tendon.

Achilles's mother, Thetis, immersed her baby son in the river Styx in an attempt to make him immortal. To stop him floating away she held onto his heels which remained dry and his only weak spot. Flash forward to the Trojan battlefield and guess what? He is felled by an arrow in the heel. What are the chances of that happening?

Atlas Vertebra

This is the first cervical vertebra of the backbone - the skull balances on top of it. It is so named because the Greek Titan, Atlas, was condemned to hold up all the heavenly bodies, often depicted in Art as a celestial sphere. The metaphor of the brain as a "universe" is taking on a more literal meaning with the advances in neuroscience: it is highly complex working in a multi-dimensional way. There are a 100 billion neurons in the brain which is about the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Coccyx

This is the name for the "tail-bone" at the opposite end of the backbone to the Atlas vertebra and is made up of anything from three to five fused bones. The name is derived from the ancient Greek word for cuckoo. Its shape resembles the cuckoo's beak as the 16th Century anatomist, Andreas Vesalius, remarked. The 17th century French anatomist, Jean Riolan the Younger went one further suggesting the "sound of farts, leaving the anus and dashing against the bone, shows a likeness to the call of the cuckoo".

Thenar Eminence

Grab the base of your thumb between thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand. The fleshy part under your forefinger is the thenar eminence made of three muscles which control your thumbs movements. Stroke the thenar eminence in front of a mirror to see if your chin twitches on the same side. If it does, this is the Palmomental reflex (your chin muscle is called Mentalis) and is present more commonly in the elderly or people with congenital conditions like Down's Syndrome. It is not a sign that anything is wrong and not indicative of dementia (for example). Why is it called the Thenar Eminence.... I don't know.

Hamstrings

There are three hamstring muscles on the back of the upper leg which, broadly serve the same function to bend the knee and extend the hip. The word ham derives from the old English word for hollow which refers to the space behind the knee. The strings refers to the tendons of these muscles that cross the space and attach to the lower leg. With your knee bent, feel behind the knee on the outside edge and you will find tendon number one, next to the thick iliotibial band. Now feel on the inside edge and you will find two more, close together which you can strum.