EPONYM
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 12:25 am
• eponym •
Pronunciation: e-pê-nim • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A personal name from which another word is derived
Notes: The eponyms of many words have been lost in the din of history. Bedlam originated as a Cockney pronunciation of Bethelehem for London's Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem for the insane. Tsar is an ancient Slavic rendition of Caesar. The proclivity of Captain William Lynch of Virginia (1742–1820) to quickly hang those brought before his court gave us the verb, lynch. Eponyms are not always fair. The very intelligent medieval philosopher Duns Scotus's criticism of Aquinas led to his detractors using his name to refer to stupid people, so today we have dunce. The adjective is eponymous [i-'pah-nê-mês], though eponymic is not unheard-of.
In Play: Many eponyms are obvious. Plato gave us platonic for one kind of love, Romeo gave us his name for another (Phil is quite a Romeo). Franz Mesmer lent his name to real hypnotism (mesmerism) while Svengali lent his to hypnotic brain-washing (Svengali). George Washington is the eponym of the U. S. capital. The eponym of Lincoln, Nebraska, is obvious. Your town and province are, no doubt, awash in eponyms like these.
Word History: Today's word came a long way to us. We snipped it from French éponyme. French inherited it from Latin, which had copied it from Greek eponumos "named after". The Greek word is made up of epi "from" + onyma "name". The PIE root *apo "off of, away from" turned into of and its variant off in English. In German it emerged as auf "on" and ab "away from" in Latin. In Russian and other Slavic languages it can be found in po "around, about", used in adverbial phrases like po-russky "in Russian, in the Russian way".
Pronunciation: e-pê-nim • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A personal name from which another word is derived
Notes: The eponyms of many words have been lost in the din of history. Bedlam originated as a Cockney pronunciation of Bethelehem for London's Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem for the insane. Tsar is an ancient Slavic rendition of Caesar. The proclivity of Captain William Lynch of Virginia (1742–1820) to quickly hang those brought before his court gave us the verb, lynch. Eponyms are not always fair. The very intelligent medieval philosopher Duns Scotus's criticism of Aquinas led to his detractors using his name to refer to stupid people, so today we have dunce. The adjective is eponymous [i-'pah-nê-mês], though eponymic is not unheard-of.
In Play: Many eponyms are obvious. Plato gave us platonic for one kind of love, Romeo gave us his name for another (Phil is quite a Romeo). Franz Mesmer lent his name to real hypnotism (mesmerism) while Svengali lent his to hypnotic brain-washing (Svengali). George Washington is the eponym of the U. S. capital. The eponym of Lincoln, Nebraska, is obvious. Your town and province are, no doubt, awash in eponyms like these.
Word History: Today's word came a long way to us. We snipped it from French éponyme. French inherited it from Latin, which had copied it from Greek eponumos "named after". The Greek word is made up of epi "from" + onyma "name". The PIE root *apo "off of, away from" turned into of and its variant off in English. In German it emerged as auf "on" and ab "away from" in Latin. In Russian and other Slavic languages it can be found in po "around, about", used in adverbial phrases like po-russky "in Russian, in the Russian way".