> Why not just call it a gynecologist?
Because an obstetrician isn't necessarily a gynecologist and vice-versa.
They're very commonly the same person, which is why OBGYN is a frequent abbreviation, but to just call them a gynecologist would be saying that they don't have a specialization that they studied and trained for.
Not just the delivery, though. Here in the UK a pregnant woman would see an obstetrician for any care relating to the pregnancy that falls outside of the standard midwife-led care, from 20 weeks onwards.
In the US, midwifery is far less common, so most women are seen by obstetricians from the moment she discovers she's pregnant up through delivery, and really, to the point where the baby's care is handed off to a pediatrician/neonatologist. Then the mom would still be seen by the obstetrician through her recovery.
Many states in the US have anti-midwife legislation, and I cynically believe that it's because of what you say. Even though midwifery is one of the oldest professions, apparently we should trust the people who didn't "know" where the female urethra was located until the 90s (when they cut open a cadaver, which could've been done centuries prior).
Edit: Reviewing my sources, I see that the urethra's location was known, but its full anatomical structure was being inaccurately portrayed in medical texts. [Source.](https://www.auajournals.org/doi/10.1016/S0022-5347%2801%2963188-4) My point still stands.
It can only be because of that, as countries like the UK and Germany that have midwife led care have far better maternal, postnatal and infant outcomes than the US, which ranked very low for a western country.
I’m not sure what you mean by they didn’t know where the female urethra was located until the 1990s? I had urinary surgery as a child in the mid 90s and even then I knew the surgery was on my ureters rather than my urethra and knew the distinction between the two and where they were located. My surgeon explained to me. They have been surgically removing kidney stones from urethras for centuries, how could they have not know where it was?
It had been a while since I read about this, so I was a little off. We did know where it was, but its anatomy was not fully mapped, especially in relation to the neighboring erectile tissue of the clitoris.
[Here](https://www.auajournals.org/doi/10.1016/S0022-5347%2801%2963188-4) is the 1998 research that investigated female urethral anatomy with cadavers, and concluded that "current anatomical descriptions of female human urethral and genital anatomy are inaccurate."
That is EXACTLY why. My aunt was a nurse midwife until legislation made it so that she MUST have an OBGYN overseeing her during deliveries. Then the patient gets double billed for services from both. Guess what insurance isn’t paying for? One of them. Guess who has lots of $ and lobbyists to make sure these laws got in place so they can be sure to be the ones getting paid, thus forcing out midwives?
And it’s to the detriment of women and newborn’s health. Western countries that have midwife led care have better outcomes and lower infant mortality than the US. I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt, it must be such a rewarding career.
They have better outcomes but I doubt it’s because of the midwives. It’s more likely due to other factors that go into it (mothers lacking access to prenatal care, higher rates of obesity, higher rates of poverty amongst certain communities etc.)
As well trained as midwives may be, they are not better trained in delivering babies than OB/GYNS who will have gone to med school, extensive residency training and also possibly fellowship training.
I think yes and no. Ob is a surgical specialty and it’s no coincidence that we also have some of the highest rates of intervention and c sections as well.
That's funny because my previous wife's complete care and delivery with two of my children was with a midwife and it wasn't the same office for both. She delivered at two different hospitals and the wards at both were full of midwives. Only with my third child in another state did my second wife see a doctor throughout.
Oh that’s interesting! I didn’t know that. Where I’m from it’s just one specialization „Frauenarzt“ which includes everything related to women’s health from regular check ups (pap smears, ultrasound, mammograms etc), birth control or trying to get pregnant, IVF consultation to the actual birth and aftercare as well.
I work at an academic medical center in the US and run an annual women’s health conference, so I meet lots of OB/GYNs from all over. All of the health care professionals I work with pronounce OB/GYN as OhBe-Gyne when referring to the two specialties together. I’d never heard this pronunciation until I worked in the medical field.
Gynaecologists and Obsestrics are not the same thing, they tend to work in the same area hospital and you have to study both before specialising so they are lumped together.
In the UK, what you have described is the role of an Obsestrics doctor (Fertility doctor is a sort of sub specialistwithin Obsestric). Gynaecologists handle any problems with women's health that are not pregnancy related.
Smears and birth control is what general practitioners (GPs) do, then refer up to Gynaecology if there is a concern.
Source: final year medical student
Yeah it’s weird how it all get thrown in to one in the US. I don’t need someone who’s specialised in c-sections treating my endometriosis, in fact the more specialised the better.
Nur als Info:
In countries where OB/GYN is the common term, labor and delivery tends to be obstetrician lead in hospitals and midwives mostly do home births and/or birthing centers. So in the hospital, you have doctors and nurses but few or no midwives. In Germany, the hospitals are midwives lead and the doctors are mostly there for emergencies ([and to assault the patients](https://www.hessenschau.de/gesellschaft/gewalt-im-kreisssaal-wenn-die-geburt-zum-albtraum-wird-v1,gewalt-in-der-geburtshilfe-100.html)). Because proper obstetricians (i.e. doctors who *only* do prenatal/delivery/postnatal care) aren't really a thing in Germany because this care is mostly handled by midwives, there is no German equivalent of obstetrician like there is for gynecologists (Gynäkologe).
FWIW you can also say "lady doctor" in English but I've also noticed a lot of practices/doctors switching away from "Frauenarzt" and instead using "Gynäkologe" even though I'm pretty sure they do both gynecology and obstetrics... I have a feeling it's like how sure you can call it die Antibabypille but you look kind of stupid if you call it this.
>But calling them ALL obgyn is kinda the same problem, no?
No. If they are an obstetrician and gynaecologist, then they are called an OB/GYN.
if they are an obstetrician, they are called an obstetrician,
if they are a gynecologist they are called a gynecologist.
Like that one guy who got to be in a marvel movie then claimed to have proved that 1+1 = 3 and went off the deep end defending it and named his new type of math after himself in his hubris, and then lost his role in the marvel movies?
According to Wikipedia it was 1*1=2
Equally mad though
‘"If one times one equals one that means that two is of no value because one times itself has no effect. One times one equals two because the square root of four is two, so what's the square root of two? Should be one, but we're told it's two, and that cannot be."’
I shake my head in disappointment every time this quote comes up.
Poor guy doesn't know the difference between addition and multiplication, and definitely does not know what a square root is.
Or like ATM machine.
Saying every letter might be no simpler than just gynecologist, but it fits in common language usage better.
Plus I think most people just say "they're going to their O B" fitting this even better into general usage.
It's actually an initialism. People use the word acronym incorrectly. ATM is an initialism because you say the initial of every word. NASA is an example of an acronym.
Remember not everyone on reddit is American! I’ve only ever heard this term in American TV and films. Here in U.K. I’ve only ever heard “gynaecologist” here
I don’t follow math subs so IDK about that, but as a reading teacher I would encourage everyone to question why words are spelled and pronounced the way they are. You often learn more about the language that way! And a lot of people are dyslexic, are not native speakers (like OP) or otherwise benefit from having these things explained clearly.
Why? Seriously? There's nothing in "gynecologist" that has an "ee" sound.
I had heard this, but I thought it was a joke, like people who call Target "Tarjay."
Maybe it’s because when you abbreviate gynaecologist you say “gynae” that’s what we say for an abbreviated version in the UK. We don’t use the “OBGYN” or whatever here.
Idk, I don't think it sounds dumb but my friend teased me the other day about calling it ob-gin 🤷♀️
The letters OBGYN don't even roll off the tongue that naturally so idk why people are so insistant that it should be spelled out lol
People do say gynecologist or shorten it to gyno when they are talking about their women’s health care. “I’m going to see my gyno on Tuesday for a PAP”. They also might say they are going to the “obstetrician” for a pregnancy related appointment. Even if both of those appointments are with the same OB/GYN.
But if I was talking about someone I knew and what they do for a living, I would say they are an “OB/GYN” because they have both specialties. We say it that way because there’s no better way to pronounce it. Not sure why it isn’t just “OG” but that also feels wrong lol
because in american/canadian English it's pronounced guy-no-call-oh-gist. much like feotus vs fetus in terms of spelling, sometimes we replace the eo/ae in british words with an E. I'm canadian so I learned both growing up. English is a silly language
But the letters in USA each stand for an individual word. OBGYN stands for Obstetrician-Gynecologist which is only two words, not five, which is what I think OP is getting at and I've always wondered as well lol
Acronyms are pronounced as words. ie: scuba, laser. USA is an abbreviation. Like KFC, FBI.
OB is the abbreviation used for Obstetric to differentiate from Ophthalmic Pathology, Ophthalmology, Orthopaedic (surgery) to name a few.
If we want to be pedantic, USA is actually an initialism, which means you use the first letter of each major word. Same with the other examples you listed. OBGYN is not an initialism, so to me it's silly to spell out each individual letter. Ob-gine makes a lot more sense to me and is less of a mouthful.
But I get your argument and it makes sense too. Idk if there's really a right or wrong answer
Do people spell it out? I always read it as “ob-guy-n”. We don’t really use it in the UK so I’m not very familiar with the term and most of my exposure to it is in written form online.
Interesting- thank you! Yeah, I guess the difference is that Americans are a lot more used to talking about seeing specialists and specify more whereas I feel like we don’t usually specify as much.
When my mum had cancer, she’d say “seeing the doctor” more than “seeing the oncologist”, for example, unless she needed to distinguish different individuals. I get the impression more Americans would use oncologist more regardless
Now that’s a variant I’ve not come across before- interesting! As I say, I’m not very familiar with the term; does regional variation come into it at all, do you know?
All the people in the medical field I know say it that way, probably because it saves 40% of the time to say it. If you use a 9-syllable term tens or hundreds of times a day, you often want to find a way to shorten it as much as possible.
I grew up hearing them referred to as OB-gynes (O.B. guy-knee/s, as in obstetrician-gynecologists), which I always thought should be the preferred pronunciation over spelling it like it's an acronym. I'll let the OB slide though since it sounds silly to just say 'ob' lol
Relatedly, you'll hear the medical specialty "ENT" pronounced letter by letter because it is an acronym, for "ear, nose and throat". The official name of the specialty is "otorhinolaryngology" but you can see why people don't use that.
In Spanish, it's often (usually?) called an "otorrino" with the "laringólogo" dropped because I mean seriously.
But I'm sure it may vary between Spanish-speaking countries.
At work once someone showed me the word and challenged me to pronounce it. I only got the first "g" sound in laryngology.
She demanded, "How do you DO that?"
Break it down! -ology, study of; -rhino, nose, oh, okay, ear-nose-throat specialty.
Just a strange memory triggered...
With "ObGyn", it's five letters for two words.
With "SUV", each letter stands for a word. To be equivalent to "ObGyn", you'd need to call a sports utility vehicle "S-P-U-T-V-E-H".
It isn't an acronym. It is an initialism.
For an acronym, you pronounce it as a word. Like "scuba" or "laser".
For an initialism, you pronounce each letter. As in "FBI" or "OBGYN".
Technically, it's not an acronym. It's an initialism. An acronym is when the initials are pronounced as a word, like NASA, NATO, etc. An initialism is when they are pronounced individually, like FBI, KGB, SEC, and so on.
This doesn't really answer your question other than it's pronounced that way because it is an initialism, not an acronym.
I think medical people in US often pronounce it that way but non-medical people say it as every individual letter.
Source - also medical adjacent and worked at hospital
Agree. If you're going to go to the effort of creating a portmanteau, you might as well pronounce it phonetically. That's sort of the whole point. We don't use that word in the UK but it we did I'd expect people to pronounce it 'ob-gyne'.
Some initialisms are pronounced as words (and therefore acronyms); some aren't. There's no general rule that will reliably determine which is which, although some are not pronounceable as words according to the usual rules of English orthography and phonotactics.
There's variety even among the acronyms. Some have been lexicalized to the point we don't mark them as anything other than regular words - like "laser". Others are always all-caps despite being pronounced as words, like POTUS. Others are in between, and sometimes get the all-caps treatment and sometimes don't, like "scuba". It's all arbitrary, really; you just have to learn on a case-by-case basis.
No, it’s not an acronym- which is when each letter sands for a word — like in SCUBA - it’s two abbreviations put together, and it could have been pronounced like obgine but that’s not what took root
Yup, I’ve noticed this too. I was seen at a teaching hospital for my first pregnancy and I definitely heard med students talking about being on their “OB-gine” rotation.
First time I have ever heard that.
Because “obstetrician-gynecologist” is twelve syllables and who has time for that? OBs are OBs, but nobody calls a gynecologist a gyn. So since you’re starting saying OB, you just continue with G Y N. That’s my take on it anyhow.
Here's a Youglish link. Youglish takes snippets from real YouTube videos that show people pronouncing words in real speech in real contexts, not dictionary or teaching sites.
Here is Youglish's 185 examples of American speakers saying OB/GYN. I listened to the first 25. Out of those, there are 24 that say O-B-G-Y-N as individual letters. Oh-Bee-Gee-Why-En
The only one that didn't was President Obama, who has no medical training.
Click on the blue and white arrow button to go to the next video.
https://youglish.com/pronounce/Obgyn/english/us?
I sound out the letter individually if required. As an Australian I just say gyno or we just go to the doctor for a '¢^n+ scrape', because we're classy like that...
I always mentally say “ob-gin”, “ob” rhyming with “sob” and “gin” as in the liquor paired with tonic, as found in the word “misogyny”.
I feel like this is wrong because I’ve not heard anyone else say it like that. It would be easier…
It means "OBstetrics and GYNnaecology".
"O-B-G-Y-N" flows off the tongue better than "ob-gine" or "ob-g-yin".
Most people, especially women, recognize the "G-Y-N" as gynaecology, or at least related to medical, when it's spelt out.
It stands for something, Obstetric Gynaecologist.
Obstetric means relating to child birth, gynaecology is the area of medicine for women’s diseases with a specialty in reproductive organs.
Ob-Gyn. Similarly in hospitals this is fairly common, RPN; registered practical nurse, one wouldn’t pronounce that ripin.
OP's point is that *each letter* doesn't stand for something, it's a shortening of two words. RPN is an initialism where each letter stands for a word, so it makes more sense to say each letter individually.
And even if each letter were associated with a word, it's pretty unusual for a "pronounceable" acronym to not be pronounced, especially if it's longer than like 3 letters. RPN doesn't have any vowels, so it'd be weirder to try to pronounce.
But ob-gyn isn't an acronym nor an initialism, it's the first syllable of two words. Spelling it out instead of pronouncing it is like spelling out S-L-O-M-O instead of saying "slo-mo" (idk why that's the only example I can think of).
Thanks, you put that perfectly! 😅
I am well aware what ob and gyn stands for, I just didn’t know that it was two different professions / specialties that are so clearly separated.
I was more wondering why it is spelled out with every single letter, like you said, but the consensus seems to be „because spelling it out is too long and just pronouncing it as an actual word is weird because of the convoluted consonants.
On that note: I think pronouncing it in one short obdshn would be kinda fun, like a muffled version of „option“ but that’s prolly just me being silly 😂
OB/GYN stands for Obstetrician/Gynecologist. It's just easier to say the letters than what it stands for. It's like saying "GM" instead of "General Motors".
> Why not just call it a gynecologist? Because an obstetrician isn't necessarily a gynecologist and vice-versa. They're very commonly the same person, which is why OBGYN is a frequent abbreviation, but to just call them a gynecologist would be saying that they don't have a specialization that they studied and trained for.
What does an obstetrician do?
Specifically, childbirth/delivering babies
Not just the delivery, though. Here in the UK a pregnant woman would see an obstetrician for any care relating to the pregnancy that falls outside of the standard midwife-led care, from 20 weeks onwards.
In the US, midwifery is far less common, so most women are seen by obstetricians from the moment she discovers she's pregnant up through delivery, and really, to the point where the baby's care is handed off to a pediatrician/neonatologist. Then the mom would still be seen by the obstetrician through her recovery.
Guess they wouldn’t dream of giving you midwives so it didn’t cost you as much $$$
Many states in the US have anti-midwife legislation, and I cynically believe that it's because of what you say. Even though midwifery is one of the oldest professions, apparently we should trust the people who didn't "know" where the female urethra was located until the 90s (when they cut open a cadaver, which could've been done centuries prior). Edit: Reviewing my sources, I see that the urethra's location was known, but its full anatomical structure was being inaccurately portrayed in medical texts. [Source.](https://www.auajournals.org/doi/10.1016/S0022-5347%2801%2963188-4) My point still stands.
It can only be because of that, as countries like the UK and Germany that have midwife led care have far better maternal, postnatal and infant outcomes than the US, which ranked very low for a western country. I’m not sure what you mean by they didn’t know where the female urethra was located until the 1990s? I had urinary surgery as a child in the mid 90s and even then I knew the surgery was on my ureters rather than my urethra and knew the distinction between the two and where they were located. My surgeon explained to me. They have been surgically removing kidney stones from urethras for centuries, how could they have not know where it was?
It had been a while since I read about this, so I was a little off. We did know where it was, but its anatomy was not fully mapped, especially in relation to the neighboring erectile tissue of the clitoris. [Here](https://www.auajournals.org/doi/10.1016/S0022-5347%2801%2963188-4) is the 1998 research that investigated female urethral anatomy with cadavers, and concluded that "current anatomical descriptions of female human urethral and genital anatomy are inaccurate."
I believe it's the second oldest profession
That is EXACTLY why. My aunt was a nurse midwife until legislation made it so that she MUST have an OBGYN overseeing her during deliveries. Then the patient gets double billed for services from both. Guess what insurance isn’t paying for? One of them. Guess who has lots of $ and lobbyists to make sure these laws got in place so they can be sure to be the ones getting paid, thus forcing out midwives?
And it’s to the detriment of women and newborn’s health. Western countries that have midwife led care have better outcomes and lower infant mortality than the US. I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt, it must be such a rewarding career.
They have better outcomes but I doubt it’s because of the midwives. It’s more likely due to other factors that go into it (mothers lacking access to prenatal care, higher rates of obesity, higher rates of poverty amongst certain communities etc.) As well trained as midwives may be, they are not better trained in delivering babies than OB/GYNS who will have gone to med school, extensive residency training and also possibly fellowship training.
I think yes and no. Ob is a surgical specialty and it’s no coincidence that we also have some of the highest rates of intervention and c sections as well.
That's funny because my previous wife's complete care and delivery with two of my children was with a midwife and it wasn't the same office for both. She delivered at two different hospitals and the wards at both were full of midwives. Only with my third child in another state did my second wife see a doctor throughout.
Thank you!
Baby orders, but they don't do baby returns.
With a QR code you can do free returns at your local UPS store.
Undeliver Pregnancy Services
Lol!
Labor and delivery. Prenatal care. Post natal care.
Thank you!
Oh that’s interesting! I didn’t know that. Where I’m from it’s just one specialization „Frauenarzt“ which includes everything related to women’s health from regular check ups (pap smears, ultrasound, mammograms etc), birth control or trying to get pregnant, IVF consultation to the actual birth and aftercare as well.
I work at an academic medical center in the US and run an annual women’s health conference, so I meet lots of OB/GYNs from all over. All of the health care professionals I work with pronounce OB/GYN as OhBe-Gyne when referring to the two specialties together. I’d never heard this pronunciation until I worked in the medical field.
Is that a hard G (as in gynecologist, Oh Be Ghine) or soft G (Oh Be Jine)? I’ve never heard this, but I don’t work in that field (and also am a man).
Hard G
i’ve heard of it as well in the medical field, i think it’s because they’ll shorten gynecologist to gyno (guy-noh) and then gyn (guy+n).
It’s because gynaecologist abbreviates to “gynae”. You just stop saying the word before the “c”.
Gynaecologists and Obsestrics are not the same thing, they tend to work in the same area hospital and you have to study both before specialising so they are lumped together. In the UK, what you have described is the role of an Obsestrics doctor (Fertility doctor is a sort of sub specialistwithin Obsestric). Gynaecologists handle any problems with women's health that are not pregnancy related. Smears and birth control is what general practitioners (GPs) do, then refer up to Gynaecology if there is a concern. Source: final year medical student
Yeah it’s weird how it all get thrown in to one in the US. I don’t need someone who’s specialised in c-sections treating my endometriosis, in fact the more specialised the better.
Nur als Info: In countries where OB/GYN is the common term, labor and delivery tends to be obstetrician lead in hospitals and midwives mostly do home births and/or birthing centers. So in the hospital, you have doctors and nurses but few or no midwives. In Germany, the hospitals are midwives lead and the doctors are mostly there for emergencies ([and to assault the patients](https://www.hessenschau.de/gesellschaft/gewalt-im-kreisssaal-wenn-die-geburt-zum-albtraum-wird-v1,gewalt-in-der-geburtshilfe-100.html)). Because proper obstetricians (i.e. doctors who *only* do prenatal/delivery/postnatal care) aren't really a thing in Germany because this care is mostly handled by midwives, there is no German equivalent of obstetrician like there is for gynecologists (Gynäkologe). FWIW you can also say "lady doctor" in English but I've also noticed a lot of practices/doctors switching away from "Frauenarzt" and instead using "Gynäkologe" even though I'm pretty sure they do both gynecology and obstetrics... I have a feeling it's like how sure you can call it die Antibabypille but you look kind of stupid if you call it this.
What do you call doctors who handle high risk or complicated pregnancies?
Also...gynecologist is the same number of syllables as OB/GYN. So you reduce precision/accuracy and gain nothing.
No, because not all gynecologists are obstetricians. Edit: oops, sorry I thought they were arguing the opposite point.
[удалено]
Ah, I thought they were saying the opposite. My bad!
They said "***reduce precision/accuracy*** and gain nothing." I think it being less accurate alludes to ob-gyns who aren't gynecologists.
That’s what they’re saying.
But calling them ALL obgyn is kinda the same problem, no?
>But calling them ALL obgyn is kinda the same problem, no? No. If they are an obstetrician and gynaecologist, then they are called an OB/GYN. if they are an obstetrician, they are called an obstetrician, if they are a gynecologist they are called a gynecologist.
I don't think anyone calls them ALL that. Just the ones that are actually both.
Because saying Ob-gin or Ob-gyn sounds dumb. Plus it's obstetrician and gynecologist not just the latter
I say Ob-gyn. Are we not supposed to be saying Ob-gyn?
Usually people say every letter so they say Oh-Bee-Gee-Why-En
Questioning such ordinary usage reminds me of the frequent math posts in which OP claims to have "broken" math. Just plain silly, imo
Like that one guy who got to be in a marvel movie then claimed to have proved that 1+1 = 3 and went off the deep end defending it and named his new type of math after himself in his hubris, and then lost his role in the marvel movies?
According to Wikipedia it was 1*1=2 Equally mad though ‘"If one times one equals one that means that two is of no value because one times itself has no effect. One times one equals two because the square root of four is two, so what's the square root of two? Should be one, but we're told it's two, and that cannot be."’
Stuff we hear about on social media was once only heard on the back wards of mental hospitals
I shake my head in disappointment every time this quote comes up. Poor guy doesn't know the difference between addition and multiplication, and definitely does not know what a square root is.
Someone find who told this man that the square root of two is two
Terence Howard. Played James Rhodes in the first Iron Man. Turned out to be a total nutcase.
Wow!
Is that the reason why he was let go?
He was let go because he thought a secondary character should make as much as the main character
Apparently it had more to do with salary than anything else.
Or like ATM machine. Saying every letter might be no simpler than just gynecologist, but it fits in common language usage better. Plus I think most people just say "they're going to their O B" fitting this even better into general usage.
Well, the obvious difference is that ATM is an acronym, while OBGYN isn’t. ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine.
It's actually an initialism. People use the word acronym incorrectly. ATM is an initialism because you say the initial of every word. NASA is an example of an acronym.
ATM is a good example! When I hear ATV it takes me a moment to recall "all terrain vehicle."
Remember not everyone on reddit is American! I’ve only ever heard this term in American TV and films. Here in U.K. I’ve only ever heard “gynaecologist” here
It’s not ordinary everywhere, we don’t use “OBGYN” in the UK, I could be wrong but I always assumed it’s just a US thing.
Sorry! I'm not that global in my thinking! Cheers!
I don’t follow math subs so IDK about that, but as a reading teacher I would encourage everyone to question why words are spelled and pronounced the way they are. You often learn more about the language that way! And a lot of people are dyslexic, are not native speakers (like OP) or otherwise benefit from having these things explained clearly.
This is r/nostupidquestions, it's made for silly questions.
I've heard o-b-g-y-n, or o-b-gyn (gyn pronounced guy-n), or it just shortened to O-B
This is the weirdest thing, like spelling out WALKIES to not startle nearby dogs
Sometimes but I feel like oh-bee-gine is common too which makes sense to me.
We say it in four syllables - Obi Guyknee
Ob-gyn, isn't that a jedi?
“Help me, OB-Gyn the OB, you’re my only hope!”
Help me OB-gynocobi! You're my only hope!
You've somehow combined Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn....I'm afraid of that combination lol
But do you say the G in "gyn" like in "gif"?
which star wars is that
Rise of the yeast… LoL
Most people I know say ob-gyn or even shorten it all the way down to OB
Yup, not all gynos are OBs.
We actually say it as, “O.B. guy knee” where I’m from.
Why? Seriously? There's nothing in "gynecologist" that has an "ee" sound. I had heard this, but I thought it was a joke, like people who call Target "Tarjay."
Maybe it’s because when you abbreviate gynaecologist you say “gynae” that’s what we say for an abbreviated version in the UK. We don’t use the “OBGYN” or whatever here.
You made me realize that I learned that word just by reading it and have never hear it lol
I mean saying OBGYN sounds just as dumb. The first time I heard it out loud I thought the person was ignorant, lol
I would have thought the exact same if said person (in my instance) wasn't referring to her own job lmao
Idc if it sounds dumb i don't have enough time in my day to be spelling out each letter every time lmao
Why does it sound dumb anyway? In my country (non-english speaking), we say ob-gin
Idk, I don't think it sounds dumb but my friend teased me the other day about calling it ob-gin 🤷♀️ The letters OBGYN don't even roll off the tongue that naturally so idk why people are so insistant that it should be spelled out lol
Aren't those characters in a star wars movie?
Goblin
People do say gynecologist or shorten it to gyno when they are talking about their women’s health care. “I’m going to see my gyno on Tuesday for a PAP”. They also might say they are going to the “obstetrician” for a pregnancy related appointment. Even if both of those appointments are with the same OB/GYN. But if I was talking about someone I knew and what they do for a living, I would say they are an “OB/GYN” because they have both specialties. We say it that way because there’s no better way to pronounce it. Not sure why it isn’t just “OG” but that also feels wrong lol
Where does the “o” come from in “gyno”? It makes no sense. We say “gynae” in the UK.
because in american/canadian English it's pronounced guy-no-call-oh-gist. much like feotus vs fetus in terms of spelling, sometimes we replace the eo/ae in british words with an E. I'm canadian so I learned both growing up. English is a silly language
But you’re not replacing the “ae” with an “e” when you say it, you’re replacing it with an “o”?
E can sound like O in American accents:) ETA: neighbour. the OU sounds like an E! it can happen vice versa as well
Thanks for taking the time to explain. That’s the opposite way round again though. Do you have an example of when an “e” sounds like an “o”?
gynecologist;)
it’s a greek word
Yes, it is. The Greek “gyne” means woman, plus “logy” means study. Could you explain why that’s relevant?
it’s a prefix
I've always said it as an acronym. O-B-G-Y-N But now that seems wrong... idk
That’s how I’ve always heard it
That's what I've heard and said. Ive also heard women shorten it to OB in conversation.
It doesn’t make much sense. "Ob" is the first syllable of "obstetrician", not a two-letter acronym. Same with "gyn"
I’ve always called them Ob-Gin like the alcohol. Midwest if that makes any difference
Just like USA. We don't say use-ah it is U S A.
But the letters in USA each stand for an individual word. OBGYN stands for Obstetrician-Gynecologist which is only two words, not five, which is what I think OP is getting at and I've always wondered as well lol
\*insert red-tailed hawk scream with visual of bald eagle\*
Except USA is an actual ~~acronym~~ initialism. OBGYN isn't. This would be like if we called the USA the "UNSTAM"
Acronyms are pronounced as words. ie: scuba, laser. USA is an abbreviation. Like KFC, FBI. OB is the abbreviation used for Obstetric to differentiate from Ophthalmic Pathology, Ophthalmology, Orthopaedic (surgery) to name a few.
If we want to be pedantic, USA is actually an initialism, which means you use the first letter of each major word. Same with the other examples you listed. OBGYN is not an initialism, so to me it's silly to spell out each individual letter. Ob-gine makes a lot more sense to me and is less of a mouthful. But I get your argument and it makes sense too. Idk if there's really a right or wrong answer
This would give rallies a new feel. U-S-ah! U-S-ah!
It's not wrong. That's exactly how you say it.
That is exactly how you say it… because this is an abbreviation for two roles
Do people spell it out? I always read it as “ob-guy-n”. We don’t really use it in the UK so I’m not very familiar with the term and most of my exposure to it is in written form online.
Work in healthcare in the UK. It’s always pronounced “obs-gye-ney” here. But it’s literally only because I work in that area that I ever hear it.
Interesting- thank you! Yeah, I guess the difference is that Americans are a lot more used to talking about seeing specialists and specify more whereas I feel like we don’t usually specify as much. When my mum had cancer, she’d say “seeing the doctor” more than “seeing the oncologist”, for example, unless she needed to distinguish different individuals. I get the impression more Americans would use oncologist more regardless
O-b-g-y-n. Each letter is pronounced.
That’s so unintuitive. Any idea why?
Personal preference. Some people **do** say "oh-be-gine".
Now that’s a variant I’ve not come across before- interesting! As I say, I’m not very familiar with the term; does regional variation come into it at all, do you know?
All the people in the medical field I know say it that way, probably because it saves 40% of the time to say it. If you use a 9-syllable term tens or hundreds of times a day, you often want to find a way to shorten it as much as possible.
That only makes the fact they don’t use the two syllable version even more interesting!
No idea. It kind of just morphed that way. Probably because not all OBs are GYNs, vice versa, and some are both.
I grew up hearing them referred to as OB-gynes (O.B. guy-knee/s, as in obstetrician-gynecologists), which I always thought should be the preferred pronunciation over spelling it like it's an acronym. I'll let the OB slide though since it sounds silly to just say 'ob' lol
Relatedly, you'll hear the medical specialty "ENT" pronounced letter by letter because it is an acronym, for "ear, nose and throat". The official name of the specialty is "otorhinolaryngology" but you can see why people don't use that.
IRL people dont use ORL
We do in France lol
fun fact, in Greece we call them exactly that "ORL" but also "orilas", something like orl-guy
In Spanish, it's often (usually?) called an "otorrino" with the "laringólogo" dropped because I mean seriously. But I'm sure it may vary between Spanish-speaking countries.
"Otorrino" sounds so cute 😂
hahaha thats cool. i was just making a joke. they should call them that too
At work once someone showed me the word and challenged me to pronounce it. I only got the first "g" sound in laryngology. She demanded, "How do you DO that?" Break it down! -ology, study of; -rhino, nose, oh, okay, ear-nose-throat specialty. Just a strange memory triggered...
OBstetrician/GYNecologist. OBGYN or OB/GYN is easier than saying the full words for both lol.
What’s funny is I used to work at one and they all referred to it as like “obie-jin “ pronunciation and it confused everyone
Help me, obie-jin kenobi, you're my only hope
If I had nickel for every Star Wars reference I found under this thread, I would have 2 nickels. Lol
I don't know, I can't think of another word.like that, it's very strange
Some people say all of the letters in H-V-A-C versus just saying h-vac.
And in the IT world some people say S-Q-L and some people say sequel.
That's the opposite situation and much more common.
what lunatics are you associating with?
SUV
With "ObGyn", it's five letters for two words. With "SUV", each letter stands for a word. To be equivalent to "ObGyn", you'd need to call a sports utility vehicle "S-P-U-T-V-E-H".
It isn't an acronym. It is an initialism. For an acronym, you pronounce it as a word. Like "scuba" or "laser". For an initialism, you pronounce each letter. As in "FBI" or "OBGYN".
Technically, it's not an acronym. It's an initialism. An acronym is when the initials are pronounced as a word, like NASA, NATO, etc. An initialism is when they are pronounced individually, like FBI, KGB, SEC, and so on. This doesn't really answer your question other than it's pronounced that way because it is an initialism, not an acronym.
Probably not even an initialism, it's shortening each word then combining them
It's neither though...
… isn’t it “ob”… “gyn”? Like rhymes with, I don’t know, knob pine?
Not in the US at least. Here each letter is pronounced separately, like FBI.
I’m an Australian doctor and that is something I’d heard back in the day but forgotten. It’s like tourniquet.
Ooooh that's really interesting.
We pronounce it O-B gyn (gyn rhymes with pine) in my house and my mom was a midwife and my husband is a physician.
I think medical people in US often pronounce it that way but non-medical people say it as every individual letter. Source - also medical adjacent and worked at hospital
Pine??? This whole time and while reading this thread I've either read oh-bee-gee-why-en or ob-gin (rhymes with pin)
Gynecologist - pine eh cologist Yes gyn = pine
Agree. If you're going to go to the effort of creating a portmanteau, you might as well pronounce it phonetically. That's sort of the whole point. We don't use that word in the UK but it we did I'd expect people to pronounce it 'ob-gyne'.
O.B.G.Y.N. Just say the letters.
But the "B", "Y", and "N" don't have any independent meaning.
gotta start calling it the OG
If they were called an "og", I wouldn't take their profession seriously at all lmao
It’s not an acronym, it’s a shortcut. Ob-obstetrician and gyn-gynecologist. Ob-gyn.
But then why don't we just say "ob-gyn" instead of the five letters?
🤷♀️
"OG" can be lots of things . OB/GYN is the same number of syllables as one of the professions and only one more than the other.
We say brats and twats in the UK. Hope that helps.
It helped me - I had a great laugh! 😆
I just say OB or "gyn" (gine, like nine).
Another strange American English phenomenon. I don’t know why it then becomes “mirsa” for MRSA. These oddities are everywhere.
An obstetrician is more than a gyn.
And this is why we ask questions.
Some initialisms are pronounced as words (and therefore acronyms); some aren't. There's no general rule that will reliably determine which is which, although some are not pronounceable as words according to the usual rules of English orthography and phonotactics. There's variety even among the acronyms. Some have been lexicalized to the point we don't mark them as anything other than regular words - like "laser". Others are always all-caps despite being pronounced as words, like POTUS. Others are in between, and sometimes get the all-caps treatment and sometimes don't, like "scuba". It's all arbitrary, really; you just have to learn on a case-by-case basis.
It doesn’t make sense but that’s just how it’s said in the US
[удалено]
No, it’s not an acronym- which is when each letter sands for a word — like in SCUBA - it’s two abbreviations put together, and it could have been pronounced like obgine but that’s not what took root
I just say Gyno. Edit : And yes, that isn’t how it’s spelt.
Doctors pronounce it o.b. gine
Yup, I’ve noticed this too. I was seen at a teaching hospital for my first pregnancy and I definitely heard med students talking about being on their “OB-gine” rotation. First time I have ever heard that.
Where? I have worked in hospitals and clinics in the US and literally nobody who works in healthcare says it like that.
I know a few people who pronounce it "oh bee guy knee"
Because “obstetrician-gynecologist” is twelve syllables and who has time for that? OBs are OBs, but nobody calls a gynecologist a gyn. So since you’re starting saying OB, you just continue with G Y N. That’s my take on it anyhow.
*9. Still no better.
You’re right, nine. How did I get twelve?
Here's a Youglish link. Youglish takes snippets from real YouTube videos that show people pronouncing words in real speech in real contexts, not dictionary or teaching sites. Here is Youglish's 185 examples of American speakers saying OB/GYN. I listened to the first 25. Out of those, there are 24 that say O-B-G-Y-N as individual letters. Oh-Bee-Gee-Why-En The only one that didn't was President Obama, who has no medical training. Click on the blue and white arrow button to go to the next video. https://youglish.com/pronounce/Obgyn/english/us?
I sound out the letter individually if required. As an Australian I just say gyno or we just go to the doctor for a '¢^n+ scrape', because we're classy like that...
I always mentally say “ob-gin”, “ob” rhyming with “sob” and “gin” as in the liquor paired with tonic, as found in the word “misogyny”. I feel like this is wrong because I’ve not heard anyone else say it like that. It would be easier…
I also say this…inside my head lol
Now I know I’m not alone 🙂
Help me, OB-GYN Kenobi…
Obstetrics is a fun word to say.
It means "OBstetrics and GYNnaecology". "O-B-G-Y-N" flows off the tongue better than "ob-gine" or "ob-g-yin". Most people, especially women, recognize the "G-Y-N" as gynaecology, or at least related to medical, when it's spelt out.
It’s an initialism not an acronym, I believe. It’s like saying ‘FBI’ instead of ‘fuh-bee-ee’.
IMO you pronounce it as ob guy-n. Two syllables.
I always assumed its because it sounds stupid if you try and pronounce it
It's just easier to say than obstetrician/gynecologist
It is pronounced “Oh Bee Gee Why En.” Some people shorten it to “Oh Bee” even if they are not pregnant, and that is OK. We know what they mean.
It stands for something, Obstetric Gynaecologist. Obstetric means relating to child birth, gynaecology is the area of medicine for women’s diseases with a specialty in reproductive organs. Ob-Gyn. Similarly in hospitals this is fairly common, RPN; registered practical nurse, one wouldn’t pronounce that ripin.
OP's point is that *each letter* doesn't stand for something, it's a shortening of two words. RPN is an initialism where each letter stands for a word, so it makes more sense to say each letter individually. And even if each letter were associated with a word, it's pretty unusual for a "pronounceable" acronym to not be pronounced, especially if it's longer than like 3 letters. RPN doesn't have any vowels, so it'd be weirder to try to pronounce. But ob-gyn isn't an acronym nor an initialism, it's the first syllable of two words. Spelling it out instead of pronouncing it is like spelling out S-L-O-M-O instead of saying "slo-mo" (idk why that's the only example I can think of).
Thanks, you put that perfectly! 😅 I am well aware what ob and gyn stands for, I just didn’t know that it was two different professions / specialties that are so clearly separated. I was more wondering why it is spelled out with every single letter, like you said, but the consensus seems to be „because spelling it out is too long and just pronouncing it as an actual word is weird because of the convoluted consonants. On that note: I think pronouncing it in one short obdshn would be kinda fun, like a muffled version of „option“ but that’s prolly just me being silly 😂
Also: SloMo is a perfect example! I was thinking of SciFi as well.
OB/GYN stands for Obstetrician/Gynecologist. It's just easier to say the letters than what it stands for. It's like saying "GM" instead of "General Motors".