Wisdom Teeth's name origin

I was speaking to my cousin the other day and she charged me with the task of finding out why wisdom teeth were known as wisdom teeth. She had apparently Googled it, as people these days do when searching information, however she was dissatisfied with the answer. Apparently the explanation she discovered was that people are wiser when their wisdom teeth come through than when their initial teeth come through. I decided to look into teeth growth a little and I found that the first stage is when you get your baby teeth (you are a young when this happens, hence why they are often referred to as baby teeth). Eventually you lose your baby teeth, and your second stage teeth replace them, these are the teeth you will have for the rest of your life. Usually the last teeth in the second stage come around the age of ten to twelve. However the final stage is your wisdom teeth which don't come through usually until you are at least 17 and often as late as 23. The stages are usually known as, your baby teeth (stage one) your permanent teeth (stage two) and your wisdom teeth (stage three). These stages were basically agreed upon on all sites I checked and also agreed with what I was taught growing up, however it still left the question of why the third stage teeth were called wisdom teeth.

I looked further into the reason and found many references to people being wiser when their third stage teeth came through than when their other teeth grew. I was nearly ready to give up and agree that this was in fact the reason when I discovered a line in one article which stated, that the ages of 17 to 25 was often a period in people's lives that was referred to as the 'age of wisdom,' hence, since the third stage teeth grew during this period they were referred to as wisdom teeth. I decided to Google this 'age of wisdom' further, however I could not find a reference to the age of wisdom that didn't relate to a clothing brand or to teeth. So it appears that wisdom teeth were named thus because the years of a person's life during which they grow is often known as the age of wisdom. However, why that period in people's life is referred to as the age of wisdom, I could not discover. I guess we will have to be happy with having half of the answer at this point in time.

Check out this article on teeth growth stages, or this one on the name wisdom tooth.