Billy Johnson, aged 12, of Bamberg, South Carolina for his question:

How did the funny bone get its name?

Each bone in the body has been given a name from the old languages Latin or Greek. The sternum is the chest bone. Its name comes from the Greek word chest. English, French, German and American doctors all know what it means.

The femur is the upper leg bone. It is coined from the Latin ward for thigh. The lower arm has two bones, the ulna and the radius. Ulna comes from the Latin word elbow. Radius, the thicker of the two, is coined from the Latin word for staff. The upper arm bone is called the humerus. Its name comes from the Latin word for shoulder.

One end of the humerus is fixed to the shoulder. A bump on the elbow is a bump on the lower end of the humerus. It hurts. Now some smart fellow made a pun, or play on words, about this painful event. He made a joke about it. So we can guess that it was not his own, but someone elects humerus, that got the bump. He called the humerus arm bone the humorous bone. And humorous spelled humorous means funny.

This painful yoke caught on. It went one step further and people called the humerus the funny bone. It may be very funny to the other fellow. But a crack on the humerus is not funny to the one who gets it.