Caesarean Section - Etymology

Etymology

The Roman Lex Regia (royal law), later the Lex Caesarea (imperial law), of Numa Pompilius (715–673 BCE), required the child of a mother dead in childbirth to be cut from her womb. This seems to have begun as a religious requirement that mothers not be buried pregnant, and to have evolved into a way of saving the fetus, with Roman practice requiring a living mother to be in her tenth month of pregnancy before resorting to the procedure, reflecting the knowledge that she could not survive the delivery. Speculation that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born by the method now known as C-section is apparently false. Although Caesarean sections were performed in Roman times, no classical source records a mother surviving such a delivery, – the earliest recorded survival dates to 1500 CE – and Caesar's mother Aurelia Cotta lived to serve him as an advisor in his adulthood.

The term has also been explained as deriving from the verb caedere, to cut, with children delivered this way referred to as caesones. Pliny the Elder refers to a certain Julius Caesar (not the famous statesman, but a remote ancestor of his) as ab utero caeso, "cut from the womb", a godly attribute comparable to rumours about the birth of Alexander the Great. This and Caesar's name may have led to a false etymological connection with the ancient monarch. Notably, the Oxford English Dictionary does not credit a derivation from "caedere", and defines Caesarean birth as "the delivery of a child by cutting through the walls of the abdomen when delivery cannot take place in the natural way, as was done in the case of Julius Cæsar".

Some link with Julius Caesar, or with Roman emperors in general, exists in other languages, as well. For example, the modern German, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Turkish and Hungarian terms are respectively Kaiserschnitt, kejsersnit, keizersnede, kejsarsnitt, sezeryan, and császármetszés (literally: "Emperor's cut"). The German term has also been imported into Japanese (帝王切開 teiōsekkai) and Korean (제왕 절개 jewang jeolgae), both literally meaning "emperor incision". Similar in western Slavic (Polish) cięcie cesarskie, (Czech) císařský řez and (Slovak) cisársky rez (literally "imperial cut"), whereas the south Slavic term is Serbian царски рез and Slovenian cárski réz, which literally means "tzar" cut. The Russian term kesarevo secheniye (Кесарево сечение késarevo sečénije) literally means Caesar's section. The Arabic term (ولادة قيصرية wilaada qaySaríyya) also means pertaining to Caesar or literally Caesarean. The Hebrew term ניתוח קיסרי (nitúakh Keisári) translates literally as Caesarean surgery. In Romania and Portugal, it is usually called cesariana, meaning from (or related to) Caesar.

According to Shahnameh ancient Persian book, the hero Rostam was the first person who was born with this method and term رستمينه (rostamineh) is corresponded to Caesarean.

Finally, the Roman praenomen (given name) Caeso was said to be given to children who were born via C-section. While this was probably just folk etymology made popular by Pliny the Elder, it was well known by the time the term came into common use.