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Anatomists name the skeletal muscles according to a number of criteria, each of which describes the muscle in some way. These include naming the muscle after its shape, its size compared to other muscles in the area, its location in the body or the location of its attachments to the skeleton, how many origins it has, or its action.
The skeletal muscle’s anatomical location or its relationship to a particular bone often determines its name. For example, the frontalis muscle is located on top of the frontal bone of the skull. Similarly, the shapes of some muscles are very distinctive and the names, such as orbicularis, reflect the shape. For the buttocks, the size of the muscles influences the names: gluteus maximus (largest), gluteus medius (medium), and the gluteus minimus (smallest). Names were given to indicate length ‒ brevis (short), longus (long) ‒ and to identify position relative to the midline: lateralis (to the outside away from the midline), and medialis (toward the midline). The direction of the muscle fibers and fascicles are used to describe muscles relative to the midline, such as the rectus (straight) abdominis, or the oblique (at an angle) muscles of the abdomen.
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CC licensed content, Shared previously, Naming Skeletal Muscles, Authored by: OpenStax College.
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