“The Latin word for the main part of the brain may be related to the Sanskrit word for head — suggesting that Proto-Indo-European speakers recognized the same organ in the same place five thousand years before Galen named it.”
Latin cerebrum — the brain, specifically the large upper portion — traces to a Proto-Indo-European root *ker-, meaning head, horn, or top. This root gave Greek keras (horn), Latin cornu (horn), and possibly Sanskrit śiras (head). The brain was named for where it is: the top, the head thing, the horn-shaped upper part of the body.
Roman medical writers distinguished cerebrum (the brain's main mass) from cerebellum (the little brain — the lower, smaller structure). Galen (129-216 CE) described the cerebrum's anatomy in detail, incorrectly believing it produced animal spirits that flowed through the nerves. His understanding was wrong; his vocabulary stuck. Cerebrum has been the anatomical term for the main brain structure for two thousand years.
The cerebrum is divided into two hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. The left hemisphere in most people processes language and logical operations; the right processes spatial and creative tasks. This lateralization was discovered in the 1860s by Paul Broca, who observed that damage to a specific left hemisphere region caused speech loss. The region is still called Broca's area.
The word cerebrum has spawned an enormous vocabulary: cerebral (of the brain), cerebrovascular (brain blood vessels), cerebrospinal (brain and spine together), cerebellum (little brain), and countless compound medical terms. The Latin tree of brain vocabulary all roots in cerebrum, the word the Romans gave the organ they could see but could not understand.
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The Proto-Indo-European root *ker- gave the world horns, heads, and the brain word simultaneously. The top of the body, the projecting part, the thing that crowns — all of these are the same concept in the deep linguistic past. The brain is the top thing inside the top thing.
The word cerebrum has survived intact through two thousand years of anatomical use because it was always approximately right: the main mass of the brain, the large upper structure, the thing the skull protects. Galen had the wrong theory of how it worked. He had the right word for what it was.
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