- Syed Yousaf Kazmi: Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Majmaah University, P.O. Box 66, Post code 11952, Al Majmaah, Saudi Arabia.
When the hunter-gatherers finally started settling down as farmers, infectious diseases started scourging them. The earlier humans could differentiate sporadic diseases like tooth decay, tumors, etc., from the infectious diseases that used to cause outbreaks and epidemics. The earliest comprehension of infectious diseases was primarily based on religious background and myths, but as human knowledge grew, the causes of these diseases were being probed. Similarly, the taxonomy of infectious diseases gradually changed from superstitious prospects, like influenza, signifying disease infliction due to the "influence of stars" to more scientific ones like tuberculosis derived from the word "tuberculum" meaning small swellings seen in postmortem human tissue specimens. From a historical perspective, we identified five categories for the basis of the microbial nomenclature, namely phenotypic characteristics of microbe, disease name, eponym, body site of isolation, and toponym. This review article explores the etymology of common infectious diseases and microorganisms' nomenclature in a historical context.