A Word From Tony Augarde

That name rings a Bell

Spoonerisms and malapropisms are both examples of eponyms - that is, words that derive from people’s names. Spoonerisms are named after a real person - The Warden Spooner of Oxford - while malapropisms get their name from the fictitious Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals. Eponyms are not as rare as you might think. In fact, the English language contains several hundred such words, although we may not immediately recognize them as eponyms. For example, several days of the week are named after people: Tuesday from Tiw or Tyr (the Germanic equivalent of the god Mars); Wednesday from Woden or Odin (the supreme god in Scandinavian mythology - whose name, incidentally, is also commemorated in the town of Wednesday); Thursday from Thor (another Scandinavian deity); Friday from Frigga (Odin’s wife); and Saturday from the Roman god Saturn. Similarly, two of our months are named after Roman emperors: July from Julius Caesar and August from Augustus Caesar.

Everyday objects like sandwiches, diesel engines, jacuzzis, and Zimmer frames all get their names from their originators. It is fairly easy to guess that some devices - like the Yale lock, the Gallup poll, the Geiger counter, and the Celsius thermometer - are named in honour of their inventors, but other words betray their sources less readily.

Did you know that the bacteria Salmonella was identified by Daniel Salmon, an American vet? The decibel derives from Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and gramophone, whose surname was adapted for the bel, a unit measuring the intensity of sound, most familiar in its tenth part, the decibel. And the Elsan portable toilet comes from the initials of its manufacturer, E. L. Jackson, plus san, short for sanitation.

Other possibly unexpected eponyms include America, named after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who probably made up the accounts of most of his voyages. The Moog synthesizer and the theremin are both musical instruments named after their inventors: respectively the American Robert Moog and the Russian Lev Theremin. So, too, are the sousaphone (from John Philip Sousa, the March King) and the saxophone and the saxhorn (after the Belgian inventor Adolphe Sax). A surprisingly large number of English words enshrine the names of French people, including Louis Braille, Jules Leotard, Etienne de Silhouette, and Madame de Pompadour (whose name is used for a hairstyle). Other French names are embedded in such words as guillotine, magnolia, nicotine, and pasteurization. Chauvinism immortalizes Nicolas Chauvin, a French soldier who thought that Napoleon could do no wrong. And, of course, sadism derives from the Marquis de Sade, although masochism comes not from a Frenchman but an Austrian: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose novels described the pleasures of suffering pain.

Taken from an article that first appeared in Limited Edition, the monthly magazine of The Oxford Times ( www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk ).

Tony Augarde is the author of The Oxford Guide to Word Games and The Oxford A to Z of Word Games.

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