Coronavirus has been making headlines lately, but do you know the origins of the word? The term was first introduced in a 1968 edition of Nature magazine, where a group of eight microbiologists proposed naming the family of diseases “coronaviruses” due to their resemblance to the solar corona. The term corona comes from the Latin word for “crown” (seen in words like coronation, coronary, and Corona beer), derived from the Ancient Greek korone, which can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European sker, meaning “turn” or “bend”. The official designation for the disease, Covid-19, stands for Coronavirus Disease 2019, the year in which the pandemic began. The official name for the virus itself is SARS-CoV-2, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2.
