10 Words You Didn’t Know Were Eponyms

http://havemacwillblog.com/2009/05/02/10-words-you-didnt-know-were-eponyms/

Posted on May 2nd, 2009 by Robin Bloor in A Day In The Life, R&R

Pyrrhic is an odd word - an adjective that only ever applies to one noun; victory. It is an eponym, as you probably know, referring to Pyrrhus of Epirus. Pyrrhus, a Greek king, fought the Romans on several occasions, most famously at the battle of Asculum. He won the battle, but at the cost of 3,500 dead. No matter that 6000 Romans also died on the field, Pyrrhus was heard to say after the battle that he could not afford another such victory.

The English language contains many eponyms, including “proprietary eponyms” like xerox, hoover, aspirin and google. To my knowledge there’s only one half-eponym. It is a gerrymander, the portmanteau word combining Gerry (after American politician and Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry: 1744-1814 ) and salamander (as in lizard). The term refers to fixing an election by fixing the boundaries of the voting area so that it includes a high percentage of people who are likely to vote for you. The voting district foisted on Massachusetts by Elbridge Gerry, gave rise to a voting district shaped like a salamander.

In many cases we may know the origin of an eponym or at least we sense that the word is an eponym even if we’re not exactly sure who the word is named for. We’d probably suspect that maverick was an eponym, for example, even if we didn’t know anything of Samuel Augustus Maverick, the American pioneer rancher, who never put brands on his cows.

What I’ve tried to assemble here is a list of surprising eponyms:

1. Panic: This derives directly from the Greek god Pan, whose domain was nature, fertility, the woods, shepherds and the flocks they minded. Pan liked to party. He spent a good deal of time dancing with nymphs and playing on his pipes. Nevertheless, he was dreaded and feared by those who traveled through the woods by night. Sudden fright without any visible cause was ascribed to Pan, giving us the word “panic.” There are many other eponyms from Ancient Greece, including; morphine (from Morpheus, Greek god of dreams), erotic (from Eros, Greek god of love), tantalize (from Tantalus, mythical king of Phrygia) and lesbian (from the Greek poetess, Sappho of Lesbos). From the Roman we get; volcano, vulcanise (from Vulcan, Roman god of fire), fauna (from Faunus, Roman god of pastures), flora (from Flora, Roman goddess of flowers) and venereal (from Venus, Roman goddess of love).
2. Lynch: There’s genuine competition for this word, as there are many possible originators. We can start with James Fitzstephen Lynch, mayor of Galway in 1493, who hung his own son for killing the nephew of a Spanish friend - an action that displeased the people of Galway. Lynch may be have been his name, but technically that wasn’t a lynching, just a common or garden hanging, so his claim to eponymity is thin. There was an Englishman named Lynch, who was sent to the colonies in 1687 to deal with piracy. Not being much of a bureaucrat, Lynch had a habit of hanging pirates without the rigmarole of a trial. Then there was that unfortunate incident near Lynch Creek in Franklin County, North Carolina (around 1778) when Major Beard, a Tory, was hung by a group of American patriots led by Major John Drake. Lynch Creek was surely named after some Lynch or other, but no-one is sure who, so there’s no-one directly claiming the eponym from that. Nevertheless, we know that a hanging without trial took place there once. Then there was the Virginian magistrate, Charles Lynch (1736-96), who presided over an informal court during the American Revolution and, last but not least, there is William Lynch (1742-1820), a Virginian plantation owner and vigilante, who was also keen on summary justice.
3. Nicotine: Nicotine is an alkaloid found in tobacco leaves, which is primarily responsible for the common addiction to cigarettes. Tobacco, as we know, was first brought to Europe by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586 from “the colonies”, part of which Raleigh named Virginia after the “Virgin Queen”, Elizabeth I. But in truth, that isn’t the truth. Tobacco came to Europe well ahead of Raleigh’s adventures. Jean Nicot was the French ambassador to Portugal, residing in Lisbon from 1559 to 1561. He was sent there to arrange the marriage of six-year-old Princess Marguerite de Valois to five-year-old King Sebastian of Portugal and when he returned he brought tobacco seeds and powdered leaves to France. He introduced snuff to the French court, which immediately gained the favor of Catherine de Medici. The fashionistas of the day took to the drug, which made Nicot a celebrity. That in turn caused the tobacco plant to be named nicotiana tabacum after Nicot, and the alkaloid to be named for the plant.
4. Zany: This word comes directly from Zanni which is an Italian nickname for Giovanni (the Italian John). It connects directly to the Commedia dell’arte, a kind of street theater that was popular in Italy from the 16th to 18th century. Zanni is the name of one of the comedic characters of the Commedia dell’arte (a servant), but the name is also used to collectively describe all the characters which include; Arlechino (the Harlequin), Pedrolino (the Pierrot), Il Capitano (the Captain), Pulcinella (Punch), Colombina, Sacaramuccia (or Scaramouche) and Pantalone. Zanni by name, zany by nature.
5. Dunce. How are the mighty fallen! The eminent John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) is deemed to be among the most important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was even nicknamed Doctor Subtilis in celebration of his brilliant and nuanced manner of thought. His work was not so highly prized by the philosophers of the sixteenth century, who accused him of sophistry. Eventually, the word “dunce”, a corruption of his middle name, came to denote someone incapable of scholarship, and the conical and comical dunce cap was invented - to be worn by pupils who disrupted class rooms in schools. So John Duns Scotus became eponymous twice; for his brilliance in founding Scotism, and for his lack of it, in being the original dunce.
6. Silhouette: A silhouette is the shadow cast by the outline of an object, at least that’s how we used the word nowadays. That’s because we now have cameras. Before the camera existed, one way of recording someone’s image (after a fashion) was to cut their profile into a card - usually a dark card. Such images were known as silhouettes, named for Etienne de Silhouette (1709 - 1767) a French finance minister who was no great shakes as an economist, but a whizz with a pair of scissors.
7. Salmonella: Theobald Smith (1859-1934) is best remembered for his work on anaphylaxis, the acquired hypersensitivity against proteins. That’s hardly fair. He also discovered salmonella, which is a hog cholera bacillus. During the study of hog cholera, which was done together with American veterinary surgeon, Elmer Salmon (1850-1914), he made the dramatic discovery that dead bacteria would still provoke an immune system response. Thus it would be possible to immunize animals against living bacteria, using dead bacteria. This became the foundation for the development of a typhus vaccine and, later, Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. Elmer Salmon, being the senior of the two was able to ensure that he himself was credited with much of the work that was done by Theobald Smith and hence it was Salmon that gave his name to salmonella, which by rights should be called smithella.
8. Comma: It’s nice to hark back to a time when people took punctuation seriously. That was certainly the case when Domenico de Comma invented the comma, a punctuation mark that he hoped would make the Bible more accessible to the reader. Unfortunately, the gentlemen of the Inquisition failed to agree with his bold innovation. Oh, one can only imagine the spirited debate that must have taken place between them. “This house believes that the comma is heresy and an affront to God!” First the debate, then the auto da fe.
9. Algorithm. Prior to the proliferation of computers, few people outside the field of mathematics knew or cared to know what an algorithm was. (It’s an explicit method for solving a problem or doing something useful.) When software companies started to patent the use of algorithms to carry out specific functions, the word slipped into more common usage, because an algorithm was suddenly something that might make you rich. Then, when CBS introduced the TV series Numb3rs in 2005, everyone got to hear the word. That was because the series is based on the absurd idea that the make-believe Math Professor, Charlie Eppes, solves real crimes that stump his brother, FBI agent Don Eppes, by dreaming up mathematical algorithms that somehow have a bearing on the case. I expect that Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi would have been horrified by the TV show. His name means “person from Khwarizm” - a state that most closely approximates to modern day Uzbekistan. He became a mathematician in Baghdad and is considered to be the founder of modern day algebra. His name was translated into Latin as Algoritmi from which the word “algorithm” comes.
10. Wisteria. The wisteria is a genus much beloved by English gardeners as a vine with pendulous flowers, that can climb up the side of a building and fan out in all directions. It is native to America, China, Korea and Japan. It’s possible that it should be written “wistaria”, and that its official spelling is simply an error. If so, Thomas Nuttall made the error. He was an admirer of the noted American physician and anatomist, Caspar Wistar, whose life achievements include publishing the two volume work “A System of Anatomy” and developing a means of preserving human remains by injecting them with wax. The wax idea might not seem like such a big deal now, but in the 19th century it was difficult to teach medicine without having preserved specimens to pore over. So Nuttall misnamed the wisteria after Casper Wistar, according to the Wikipedia (see entry under Caspar Wistar) or possibly not, because the genus was named after the notable Quaker, Daniel Wister, according to the Wikipedia (see entry under Wisteria.)

This leaves me with a few words that never made it onto the list of 10, either because they were too well known or becasue the story behind them never sparked my interest. It’s likely that some of these will also be a surprise to you:

• bigot: named for an intolerant English Puritan teacher Nathaniel Bigot (1575-1660),
• bluetooth: the wireless protocol named for Viking King, Harald Blatand (c. 910-987) whose name translates to bluetooth.
• bloomers: named for American feminist, Amelia Jenkins Bloomer (1818-94), who never invented but did advocate the wearing of bloomers.
• diesel: named for German mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913), who designed and built the first diesel engine.
• doggerel: named for English poet, Matthew Doggerel (1330-1405), who had some unappreciated poems published by Chaucer.
• hooligan: named for London based Irish criminal, Patrick Hooligan, a thief and ruffian.
• marmalade: named for Joao Marmalado from Portugal (1450-1510), who learned to boil oranges with sugar and water.
• syphilis: a character in the poem Syphilis seve Morbus Gallicus by Girolamo Fracastro (1483-1553), both the name of a shepherd and the disease he suffered from.

10 Words You Don’t Know (with Limericks)
10 IT Words That You Don’t Know
10 Short Words You Don’t Know
10 Words Whose Etymology You Don’t Know
10 Collective Nouns That You Don’t Know
Click here for the full list: Words You Dont Know