A professor in the math department at University of Minnesota said that he
believed the abscissa and ordinate where named during the development/use of
plane geometry and thus the 3rd dimensional axis may not have a formal name
as such.

Josh English wrote:

> My teacher posed this question to us last night, and he doesn't know the
> answer himself.
> A student once new that the x coordinate was called the abcissa, and the
> y coordinate is called the ordinate. Since we're starting R3 calculus,
> this student wanted to know if there was a name for the z coordinate.
>
> Does anyone know of one?
>
> --
> Josh English
> eng### [at] spiritonecom
> "May your hopes, dreams, and plans not be destroyed by a few zeros."

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