{"doi":"10.1111/bjh.18063","title":"Lymphoma Nomenclature ‐ What's in a name?","abstract":"James O. Armitage and Robert Peter Gale “If Lincoln were alive today he'd be turning over in his grave.” President Gerald R. Ford. The disease we call Hodgkin lymphoma was first described by Sir Thomas Hodgkin in 1832 noting a possible 1666 reference by Marcello Malpighi.1, 2 At the time Hodgkin was museum curator (morbid anatomist) at Guy's Hospital, London, where he studied seven autopsy cases of people with massive lymph node enlargement and severe symptoms. Interestingly, the seven were prior patients of other famous English or Scottish physicians including Richard Bright (acute and chronic nephritis), Thomas Addison (adrenal insufficiency and pernicious anaemia) and Robert Carswell (probably multiple sclerosis). Hodgkin’s report, On some morbid appearances of the absorbent glands and spleen, was published in Medical-Chirurgical Society Transactions, but went largely unnoticed. Hodgkin is said not to have viewed his contribution as particularly important and certainly did not suggest it be called Hodgkin disease. In 1856, Samuel Wilks, succeeding Hodgkin as museum curator, reported 13 seemingly similar cases.3 In his initial report Wilks failed to mention Hodgkin.4 However, Bright advised him of Hodgkin's work and in, a second publication, Wilks named the illness Hodgkin's disease [sic; Hodgkin did not have it].5 The name stuck. At that time it was common practice to name a disease after the physician first describing it. Wilks however was less lucky than Hodgkin, Bright and Addison. Although he was the first to describe ulcerative colitis, myasthenia gravis and Korsakoff syndrome, none are named for him, showing the importance of engaging a good public relations firm for academic success. In 1872 and 1876, 40 years after Hodgkin's observation, Langhans and Greenfield independently described histologic features of Hodgkin lymphoma, and in 1898 and 1902, Carl Sternberg and Dorothy Reed independently described the multi-nucleated cell considered a hallmark of Hodgkin lymphoma.2, 6, 7 (Figure 1). Why we say Reed-Sternberg rather than Sternberg-Reed cell is unclear and again speaks to the importance of engaging a publicist. Interestingly, Reed was a medical student at Johns Hopkins at the time of her report who, as a female, had been discouraged from attending medical school by Sir William Osler. Beginning with Wilks naming the disorder Hodgkin disease, lymphomas have been classified as Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Why is unclear. The clinical features of Hodgkin's cases were not unique and most were later determined to not have Hodgkin lymphoma (vide infra). We now know lymphomas are cancers of B- and T- lymphocytes and that Hodgkin lymphoma arises in a B-lymphocyte like other B-lymphocyte lymphomas such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), follicular lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), small cell lymphoma (SCL) and others. These considerations prompt the question whether it is time to reject the dichotomization of lymphomas into Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Put otherwise, is not Hodgkin lymphoma simply a sub-type of non-Hodgkin lymphomas? Using an exclusionary designator for a disease or group of diseases lacks precision and courts confusion. One is reminded that acute myeloid leukaemia was once referred to acute non-lymphocytic leukaemia, ignoring the dozens of other non-lymphocytic leukaemias. We emphasize that our proposal is not to abolish the designator Hodgkin lymphoma as a specific lymphoma sub-type but rather the clinical and biologically irrational dichotomization of lymphomas into Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas. But the plot thickens. The 2016, revision of the World Health Organization classification of lymphoid neoplasms divided Hodgkin lymphoma into classical and nodular lymphocyte predominant sub-types.8 Nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma is strongly CD20-positive and behaves more like a typical indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma including transforming into DLBCL. Previously, some a","journal":"British Journal of Haematology","year":2022,"id":289279,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9638,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":313717,"name":"Robert Peter Gale","orcid":"0000-0002-9156-1676","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258332,"name":"Elaine S. Jaffe","orcid":"0000-0003-4632-0301","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":35692,"name":"Jamés O. Armitage","orcid":"0000-0001-9802-7479","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":19,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:30:18.766838Z","pmid":"35544408","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}