Coming up on Word Matters, eponyms, when you're notorious enough to get a word named for you.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea, Peter Sokolowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
We often discuss how a particular English word came to be.
Was it born among English's earliest Germanic roots?
Or did it come from the French spoken by those Norman invasion folks?
Or was it a product of mashing two existing words together?
Well, thanks to a question from a listener,
today we're discussing that small set of words that have the name of a particular person as their source.
So-called eponyms take hold when some regular Jack, Jane,
or Joe Schmo somehow manages, regrettably or not, to make a lexical impression.
I'll start things off.
We have an email from Fred who asks about eponyms.
He writes, So often used,
it doesn't register that this was once a term that referred to a particular person.
And the answer is a resounding yes.
There are so many eponyms that are no longer recognized as being eponyms.
I have a favorite.