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When vaginal birth is not possible (or not the safest choice), doctors will opt for a surgical procedure, making an incision in the mother's abdomen to remove the baby. This is commonly known as a C-section, short for Cesarean section.
The resemblance between the word Cesarean and the name Caesar is undeniable. In fact, earlier variations of the term, such as Caesarean and Caesarian, date back to at least the early 1600s. The most widely accepted theory suggests that the procedure is named after Julius Caesar, who was believed to have been born via C-section.
French surgeon Jacques Guillemeau famously wrote in his 1609 book Child-birth, or, The Happy Delivery of Women that “[Caesar] was rip’t out of his Mother's wombe, at the very instant she died.”
There’s a major flaw in this theory: Julius Caesar’s mother, Aurelia Cotta, did not die during childbirth. She passed away in 54 BCE, a full decade before her son’s assassination. Additionally, there is no evidence suggesting that any ancient Roman woman survived a C-section, a procedure usually performed only on women who were either already dead or beyond saving. Therefore, it’s highly unlikely that Aurelia Cotta underwent this procedure.
In his work Natural History, Pliny the Elder offered an alternative explanation for the origin of the name. He suggested that Julius Caesar’s oldest ancestor was called Caesar because he had been cut from his mother’s womb. The Latin word caesus comes from caedere, which means “to cut.” (However, there are other theories about the origin of the name Caesar.)
As Lawrence D. Longo and Lawrence P. Reynolds detailed in their 2016 reference book Wombs with a View, the term Cesarean in relation to childbirth might have connections to Numa Pompilius, the ruler of Rome from 715 to 672 BCE. During his reign, he enacted a law that required a pregnant woman who died late in her pregnancy to have her baby delivered via incision. This law persisted through the reign of the Caesars, so it’s possible that the delivery method became associated with—and named after—the Caesars’ rule.
The various theories remain just that—theories. However, even if no Caesar was ever directly linked to the Cesarean section, the fact that so many influential historians and physicians believed—and reinforced—the connection likely explains why the term has endured through the ages.
