κέντρονkéntron, noun
Kentron is the ancient Greek word for the fixed point of a compass, the point from which a circle is drawn. It passed into Latin as centrum and into English as centre.
- Word
- κέντρον (kéntron)
- Language
- Ancient Greek, from κεντεῖν, to prick
- Pronunciation
- KEN-tron · केन्ट्रॉन
- First meaning
- A sharp point: a goad, a sting, a spike
- Later meaning
- The fixed point of a compass; the centre of a circle
- Descendants
- Latin centrum · English centre · Armenian կենտրոն
From goad to centre
Kentron (κέντρον, kéntron) is an ancient Greek noun. Its first meaning was a sharp point: the goad used to drive cattle, the sting of a bee, the spike at the end of a staff. It comes from the verb kentein, to prick.
Greek geometers gave it a second life. When you draw a circle with a compass, one leg stays fixed and the other moves; the fixed leg leaves a small pricked point at the middle of the page. That point was the kentron, and from it the word came to mean the centre of a circle.
The Romans borrowed it as centrum. From Latin it reached French as centre and then English. Every time you say centre, central or concentrate, you are using a word that started as a compass point in Greek.
Euclid uses the word in exactly this sense in the Elements, where a circle is defined by a line drawn around a fixed point, and that point is called the kentron. Two thousand three hundred years later, the definition still holds and the word is still in use: modern Greek says κέντρο for a city centre, a shopping centre, the centre of attention.
The word’s family
- centrumLatin
- Borrowed directly from Greek; the fixed leg of a compass, then the middle of anything.
- centre, centerFrench, English
- From Latin via Old French. The English spelling split is eighteenth century; the word is the same.
- concentricEnglish
- Circles sharing one centre. The company diagram, in one word.
- eccentricEnglish
- Literally out of centre: a circle whose middle is somewhere else.
- centrifugal, centripetalEnglish
- Fleeing the centre, seeking the centre. Newton's coinages, built on centrum.
- կենտրոն (kentron)Armenian
- The everyday Armenian word for centre, borrowed from the same Greek root.
Why we chose it
We wanted a name that was short, easy to say in Hindi and English, not tied to healthcare or any one industry, and a real word rather than an invented blend. Kentron met all four, and the meaning did the rest.
A parent company is supposed to be the fixed point. The products are circles drawn from it, with different radii and different customers but the same centre. What the centre holds is not a logo: it is how we model data, how we handle a patient’s records, how we answer the phone at nine at night, what we charge and whether we publish it.
The older meaning, the goad, we keep quietly. Most software we replace is not broken; it is slow, and everyone has stopped noticing. A small prick in the right place helps.
There is a longer version of the story in the journal: why we named the company Kentron.
Sources
- κέντρον, Wiktionary: senses, etymology and descendants.
- center, Online Etymology Dictionary: the path from Greek kentron through Latin centrum to English.
- Kentron, Wikipedia: other uses of the word, including the central district of Yerevan.
Questions
What does Kentron mean?
Kentron (κέντρον) is an ancient Greek noun meaning a sharp point, and by extension the fixed point of a compass from which a circle is drawn, hence the centre of a circle. It is the origin of the Latin centrum and the English word centre.
How do you pronounce Kentron?
KEN-tron, with the stress on the first syllable. In Devanagari it is written केन्ट्रॉन.
Is Kentron a Greek word?
Yes. κέντρον appears in classical Greek from Homer onwards, first meaning a goad or sting, and in Euclid's Elements meaning the centre of a circle. Modern Greek still uses κέντρο for centre.
Why is the company called Kentron Technologies?
Because a parent company should be the fixed point: the things that do not change from product to product. Healthixio, Pathixio, Biznixio and Gymnixio are circles of different sizes drawn from the same centre.
Next step
Now you know what it means. Here is what we build.
A demo of any product, or a conversation about something that does not exist yet. Either way, you will talk to someone who builds the software.