There are two types of cilia: motile cilia and non-motile. But why are non-motile also called primary cilia?
The original designation of Primary came from studies of vertebrate ciliated epithelia. As the cells differentiate, they at first have a single, non-motile (sensory) cilium, as typical of most vertebrate cells. They later dock hundreds of basal bodies to the apical membrane and assemble motile cilia. The first, non-motile cilium was called a primary cilium.
Don't confuse this with the medical terminology related to the 'primary' cause of a disease, which names all diseases that result from defects in motile cilia as Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia.
See: RA Bloodgood (2009) "From central to rudimentary to primary: the history of an underappreciated organelle whose time has come. The primary cilium." Methods in Cell Biology 94:3-52. Bloodgood credits SP Sorokin (1968), J. Cell Sci. 3:207-230, with actually coining the term Primary Cilium.
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