When you figure out hippocampus is the genus name for seahorses, and then see the little tail on the coronal MRI it makes a much stronger visual image.
This happened to me, but then I went to investigate where the name “campus” came from, since campus has nothing to do with sea in Greek. All I found is that there was a sea monster in Greek mythology of that name …
(In Percy Jackson, there are sea horse which are proper horses only of the sea, I’m not sure where Rick Riden took the inspiration for them from)
Campus might be from the Latin “campus, ī, 2m” for field or plain… maybe something to do with the “horse” part of it?
EDIT: nope. Kampos is also from Greek, it means sea monster or shark in this context… and hippos of course is horse. They had a “hippocamp” in mythology with the front end of a horse and rear of a dolphin, hence the “sea monster” etymology. Real sea horses are thus named because they resemble a miniature hippocamp.
Pretty much. And for etymology searches like this Wiktionary is a life saver. Just type in hippocampus and follow the link rabbit holes, and it gives you the etymology: hippocampus < hippocamp (mythical sea monster) < hippos (horse) + kampos (shark).
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