Eponym

An eponym is a word named after somebody or someplace.

An eponym, almost by definition, comes with a story, making them some of the most intriguing words. Knowing what an eponym is also allows you to use the word eponymous, which is always a good way to sound smart.

Some of my favourite eponyms are now commonplace products that took the inventor's name. Some examples:

The Rubik's Cube

The Rubik's cube is an invention by Hungarian architecture professor Ernő Rubik. The cube has the fascinating property of being a solid object that's also fluid.

This year (2024), the Rubik's Cube turned 50 , celebrating around half a billion cube sales, scores of speed-cubing championships, and documentaries. When Rubik first invented the cube, he wasn't sure it was solvable and only managed it for the first time several months after creating it.

In 2020, Rubik told the story of the cube in his book, Cubed: The Puzzle of Us All .

The Jacuzzi

The fabulously named jacuzzi, or more generally the hot tub, is named after the Italian Jacuzzi family. The seven brothers of the family—there were also six daughters—trained to become engineers, making plane propellers, irrigation systems and pumps before one of the brothers created a homemade bath to help his two-year-old son who was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. The rest, as they say, is history.

Saskia Solomon tells some of the brothers' story, which includes the court case Jacuzzi vs Jacuzzi, and the invention of the jacuzzi in the 2023 New York Times article, The Frothy Saga of the Jacuzzi Family .

The Sandwich

After so long as what seems the most basic of foods, it was remarkable for me to learn that the humble sandwich was named after a person: John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Though he probably spent most of his time in London, the title itself is associated with the small town of Sandwich in Kent, in Southeast England.

The story goes that the Earl liked playing cards and wanted food he could eat without having to leave his game and that wouldn't give him sticky fingers that would damage the cards. Incarnations of open sandwiches appeared much earlier elsewhere. For example, the trencher—something I had to look up when reading Game of Thrones—involved serving food on top of old bread as a sort of plate. But it took the Earl's dedication to card playing, or at least desk work, to take the next step many years later.

The Biro and BiC ballpoint pens

László Bíró was a Hungarian-Argentine inventor who created the first truly successful ballpoint pen. In the US, the BiC is more common, an eponym this time from Marcel Bich.

It's said that Lázló experienced his fountain pen leaking from heat—fountain pens being very common before the ballpoint—and was inspired by a printing press that used a cylinder to spread the ink. All it needed was to go in all directions. Enter the ballpoint.

While the invention seems obvious in hindsight, perfecting it for robust, commercial use was challenging. For example, finding suitable ink for the tiny ball bearing to spread, which doesn't leak or clog and isn't overly affected by heat. Lázló teamed up with an aviation company—who use a lot of ball bearings—which also provided a great use case of finding a pen that wouldn't leak from the air pressure changes in planes. Later, BiC licenced the technology from Biro. A Bic Cristal® Ballpoint pen is part of the collection at the MoMA .

Silhouette

I only learned that silhouette was an eponym while preparing this sketch, but it's perhaps the best of all.

Étienne de Silhouette, a French government finance official tasked with curbing a French deficit in the 1700s, unwittingly gave his name to the classic black-on-white simple outline image of a person. His severe frugal policies of taxes, curbing royal spending and even melting down gold and silverware earned him the reputation of doing things cheaply. Hence, a cheap method of creating a portrait, cutting out black paper and laying it on a white background, became known as a silhouette.

Diesel

Nearly everyone will recognise the fuel that Rudolf Diesel gave his name to and his diesel engine. Diesel created a breakthrough engine that was more efficient than typical steam engines while being smaller and weighing less.

Curiously, I learned that Diesel died in mysterious circumstances, disappearing on a journey across the English Channel in 1913.

An excellent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast featuring Helen Zaltzman of the Allusionist raised several interesting questions about eponyms I hadn't considered. Here are a few to think about:

Eponyms are common in medicine, for example, when we name a disease or condition after those playing a part in the discovery. However, the name, for example, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, tells a medical practitioner very little about the disease compared to a name that relates to the symptoms of the sufferer or the cause. Should examples like these be replaced with more practical names?
Eponyms almost always have a way of oversimplifying a story, often wrapping up complex histories with the names of white males. For example, rarely are products invented or diseases identified solely through the actions of one person. Yet an eponym chooses one, or some people, at the expense of others.
Eponyms may be the name of someone later discredited or who develops a tarnished reputation from other actions in their lives. Should someone who did evil deeds be remembered in an eponym or should it be changed?

Who knew eponyms could be so interesting?

Know some good eponyms with fun stories? I'd love to hear them.

Eponyms are distinct from the fun concept of Nominative determinism—an aptronym—where someone's name seemingly influenced their future actions or career choices (for example, Les McBurney — Volunteer firefighter).

I've covered a lot of eponyms over the years, far more than I realised. Using the handy list page on the site, I've collected some other eponym examples, which include a lot of my favourites:

Other fun -onym words about words:

Published 13 Oct 2024