wonder if there is a specific name for the crest in the upper lip of a human.
In Indonesian language, we don't have any name for that certain part of the body; but in one native language of ours (sundanese) we call it 'mamaungan'; refers to an old belief that people who don't have such a crest are considered a semi-human that can change their appearance into tigers.

It's called the philtrum.

Philtrum - Wikipedia

Selamat datang! Ahmad. Anda akam mau menulis Bingley...argh, my former on-line helps for bahasa Indonesia seem to have disappeared. I want to say that you should send a Private Message as a halo to Bingley--dia tinggal Jakarta. (Sorry for the poor quality of my bahasa I.)

Yes, it is selamat makan. But what does it matter when the food is so good. (and there are so many different 'dialects'? 'languages'?)

I love the tahu telor and the ajam rudjak , not to mention the gadu gadu, the lontong and the sajur lodeh. Ikan Bali or ikan sambal goreng. And all the rest of it.
We don't have a word for the part between nose and mouth at all either, Ahmad.
Philtrum sounds very medical to me.

Philtrum is based on phil(ia) --love --since the spot (just above the lip is the place to put a love potion.. (so when you are kissed, the potion would be transfered.)

I've also seen the term infranasal depression for philtrum. Alleged words in German Oberlipperinne and Japanese and Chinese 人中 can be found by googling.

That's a neat belief. In Judeo-Christian legend, there's a story about how the angel Gabriel forms the philtrum by placing his finger over a baby's lip to quiet them from crying for the first time.

Person middle?

Person middle?

Yup. I did find it in one reputable online Japanese-English dictionary Jim Breen's WWWJDIC.


Also, if you search on the hanzi/kanji in Google, you'll find discussions of the word as an anatomical term.

That's the problem with finding a word for it. I mean philtrum is plain latin.


Oberlipperinne seems a doubtful word as Lippe and lip(D.)only mean lip, those two parts of the mouth where many women put lipstick on. If I would translate this Oberlipperinne to an in Dutch non existing word : bovenlipgleufje people could confuse it with a hare-lip.

Oberlipperinne to: bovenlipbinnenste would mean the inside of the upper lip. That's how I read the German word too.

Or would the German word for that be Oberlipperinnenste?

Huh. I parsed it as "inny over the lip."

I did not suggest that it was actually the word for the (ultimately) Greek philtrum, but one I found, along with the Sino-Niponese one, by googling. Cave verbum.