People to word (eponyms)

One of the easiest ways to find names for new things is to turn them into eponyms—words named after people, usually their inventor or someone closely associated with them, but sometimes in honour of a famous person or for more remote reasons. There is only room here for a small sample of the thousands of such words in English.

 Science has always been keen to give credit where credit is due, so it is no surprise that the vast majority of scientific measurements are named after people. The amp or ampere was named in the mid 19th century after André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), a French pioneer in electrical research; the watt [L19th] in honour of James Watt (1736–1819), inventor of the modern steam engine; and the volt [E19th] after the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta (1745–1827); and so on. Moore’s law, expressing the way computing power increases exponentially, was formulated by the microchip manufacturer Gordon Moore (b.1929) in 1965, while the programming language Ada [L20th] honours Byron’s daughter, the mathematician Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815–52) whose ideas lie behind much programming, as do those of George Boole (1815–64), who gave us Boolean [M19th] logic. Social sciences give us the Peter Principle [M20th], that in business people are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence, formulated by Laurence Peter (1919–90), and the Overton Window [E21], describing the way politicians can only use ideas once they are acceptable to the public, comes from the American Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003). In engineering the diesel engine [L19th] was invented by the German Rudolf Diesel (1858–1913). Medicine has given us innumerable eponyms including the Pap test [M20th] for cervical cancer named after George Papanicolaou (1883–1962), who suggested the technique in 1928; Alzheimer’s described by the German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915) in 1907; and Asperger’s, described by the Austrian Hans Asperger (1906–80) in 1944.

 Politics give us innumerable isms based on politicians’ names, but also gives us boycott [L19th] after Charles Boycott, who in 1880 was one of the first people to be ostracized by the Irish Land League in its campaign to lower rents, while Captain William Lynch set up his own court during the War of American Independence to prosecute supporters of the British, giving us lynch law [E19th]. The French Revolution gave us the guillotine [L18th] named after Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who did not invent the machine but suggested it as a more humane way of beheading people, and also chauvinism [L19th], after Nicolas Chauvin’s supposed excessive patriotism and worship of Napoleon—although we are not quite sure if he really existed. The Second World War gave us the quisling or collaborator after Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), a Norwegian fascist leader who cooperated with the Nazis when they occupied his country. In 1935 the Soviet Russian government held up Aleksei Stakhanov (1906–77), a coal miner who produced phenomenal quantities of coal, as an example to his country, giving us Stakhanovite [M20th].

 The military world is also a source of eponyms. Four 19th-century British generals are found in wellington boots [E19th], after the Duke of Wellington; the cardigan, [M19th] after the earl who led the Charge of the Light Brigade and whose troops are said to have been the first to wear one; the raglan [M19th] sleeve, after Lord Raglan, who is said to have used this loose-shaped sleeve after he lost an arm at the Battle of Waterloo; and General Sam Browne [M19th] developed what became a standard military belt after he too lost an arm and could no longer unsheathe his sword without the belt being cross-braced. Sideburns [L19th] were originally called burnsides after the American Civil War general A. E. Burnside (1824–81), but once his fame waned, the elements were reversed as that appeared to make more sense. Some generals can be martinets [L17th], a term derived from the French drill master Jean Martinet (d.1672).

 Turning to the gentler worlds of fashion and food, in 1757 the Sèvres porcelain factory developed a rather sickly pink to use on their pieces, which they called Pompadour pink [M18th] after Madame de Pompadour, then mistress of the French king Louis XV and a keen collector of their products. A number of fashion products were also named after her: the one that lasted is the hairstyle with the hair turned back from the forehead in a roll, and particularly in America an exaggerated man’s quiff [L19th]. Hats seem particularly prone to taking their makers’ names. Despite its bowl shape, the bowler hat got its name from its original maker, William Bowler, in the mid 19th century. The Stetson [L19th] gets its name from its maker John B. Stetson (1830–1906) and the Borsalino [E20th] was first made by the Italian Guiseppe Borsalino in 1857. The trilby [L19th] is a slight outlier, getting its name from the heroine of George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby; in the book illustrations Trilby wore a distinctively shaped hat that was given her name. The novel is also the source of the manipulative Svengali [E20th]. Among practical clothes bloomers [M19] were originally trousers gathered at the ankle promoted by the feminist Amelia Bloomer (1818–94); the leotard [E20th] is named after the French trapeze artist Jules Léotard; the mackintosh [M19] after Charles Macintosh (1766–1843); and Levi’s [E20th] named after Levi Strauss, who reinforced his jeans with rivets for miners during the California gold rush.

 Food eponyms tend to be at the ritzy [E20] end of the market (after the hotels of César Ritz (1850–1918), such as Melba toast and peach Melba (both E20th after the Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861–1931); the pavlova [E20th] after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881–1931); praline [E18th] named after the French soldier whose cook invented it; and Perrier [E20th] after a French Dr Perrier (d.1912). The humble sandwich [M18th] gets its name from the 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–92), who was so keen a gambler he ate at the card table, and the Mexican chef Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Anaya is credited with inventing nachos [M20].

 Which leaves us with the mystery of the twerp [E20], which may well come from a certain Oxford student T. W. Earp, described by his contemporary student J. R. R.Tolkien as ‘the original twerp’.

 See also battery, carpaccio, derrick, draconian, fuchsia, galvanize, gerrymander, grog, hack, jacuzzi, laconic, macabre, machiavellian, masochism, mausoleum, maverick, mccoy, sadism, sapphic, shrapnel, spartan, spoonerism, teddy.