The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) has decided to rename the hymen. It's new English name, according to the group, is the "Vaginal Corona."

Everyone knows that the vagina is already an organ of many monikers and has more parts than a Rube Goldberg Machine. So why are our blonde buddies across the Atlantic further complicating our lady-parts?

Because the Swedish term for hymen, mödomshinna, translates literally as “virginity membrane,” leading to misconceptions about what virginity means and what the organ-formerly-known-as-hymen has to do with it. In English, the hymen was named for the Greek God of marriage with the same name. (Every time you're having sex out of wedlock, remember, Hymen is watching you.)

The new Swedish term for the hymen is slidkrans.

Krans is a Swedish word for something shaped like a circle,” RFSU secretary general Åsa Regnér told Swedish news site, The Local. “Language has power over how we think. The point is to provide information about how the body works.”

Sweden isn't the only place where intact hymens are mistaken for purity and vice-versa. In some Australian tribes, for example, older women inspect and puncture each young woman's hymen a week before she is married. If, while they're down there, they notice it's already separated from the vaginal walls, the bride-to-be is subject "to public humiliation, torture, and sometimes death." Jesus.

One would like to think it is common knowledge in places like the United States, where sex education is more prevalent than many places in the world, that the membrane in question can be punctured by many things other than a penis, like a tampon, or by the woman's own fingers while masturbating (conversely, if the hymen is too small to be ruptured, it can stay intact through childbirth). Unfortunately, as often proved by the sex-education-bashing Christian Right, this is not always the case.

Though the term "vaginal corona" doesn't roll of the tongue in quite the same way, if changing the name can help dispel rumors about sex and virginity, then it's about time for a change. Go Swedes!