What does MD stand for after a doctors name?
MD does NOT stand for medical doctor, although that’s the common interpretation. MD is a Latin abbreviation, Medicinae Doctor. Its English translation is “Doctor of Medicine”. Similarly, a PhD stands for Philosophiae Doctor, or “Doctor of Philosophy”, not “Philosophical Doctor”. We don’t use Latin much anymore, so we assign the letters a reasonable English equivalent “medical doctor”. Technically though, the latin order is correct, By contrast, the Doctor of Osteopathy degree (a much newer degree), follows the English order since it was created in the 1800s, when Latin had lost some (but not all) of its preeminence.
