Are there examples of terms named after a person that are no longer capitalized?

Question

Are there any grammatically correct examples of terms named after someone that are no longer capitalized?

I know certain brand names have become so ingrained in the lexicon that they are no longer capitalized - xerox, coke, hoover, etc. - but are there examples where the now-lower cased item is named after a person?

Related (but not duplicate): Should the word Boolean be capitalized? — F'x, Feb 22 '11 at 21:02
Capitalization has nothing to do with grammar. It is a matter only of orthography. — tchrist, Feb 15 '15 at 23:05
Today's bozo went though a Bozo phase before relapsing. Gore Vidal did his level best to help a coterie of Supreme Court Justices achieve smalldom in Myron — Phil Sweet, Feb 10 '20 at 03:09

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 22 '11 at 22:30

12

All units of measurement named after scientists are, when used in English, in lowercase. So, you can add to your list: kelvin, joule, ampere, henry, newton, hertz, pascal, watt, coulomb, volt, farad, ohm, siemens, weber, tesla, becquerel, gray, sievert, and others.

answered Feb 22 '11 at 22:30

F'x

38,736

2

Though the SI symbols derived from them are in uppercase. – TRiG Jul 05 '11 at 13:14

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 22 '11 at 20:42

8

A quick Wikipedia search gave me these words: quixotic (I'm not sure this counts), draconian, and cesarean.

answered Feb 22 '11 at 20:42

John

304

Off the top of my head: bloomers. – Marthaª Feb 22 '11 at 20:48
Thanks! I had no idea there was a Greek statesman named Draco for whom the word draconian was named after. Learn something new every day. – Scott Mitchell Feb 22 '11 at 20:52
14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponyms offers some more examples: atlas, bowdlerize, braille, casanova, chauvinism, daguerreotype, derrick, diesel, gerrymander, guppy, jeremiad, jeroboam, leotard, lynch, martinet, mausoleum, narcissist, nicotine, poinsettia, sideburns, tarmac, teddy bear, sadism, saxophone, shrapnel, volt, watt. – John Feb 22 '11 at 21:14
Include masochism, baud and silhouette. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 16 '15 at 00:12
In British English at least 'to hoover' means to use a vacuum cleaner. William Hoover's company was, of course, eponymous. – BoldBen Feb 10 '20 at 01:21

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 22 '11 at 20:45

7

Also boycott and euclidean (as in geometry), although that latter one usually is still capitalized.

answered Feb 22 '11 at 20:45

Alex

5,032

I didn't know boycott was named after anyone, neat. Although I don't recall ever seen the Euclidean in "Euclidean geometry" in lower case. – Scott Mitchell Feb 22 '11 at 20:53
@Scott Mitchell Yeah, I didn't know it either, strange because the episode after which the verb is coined happened fairly recently, in the 1880s. – Uticensis Feb 22 '11 at 23:31
In Ireland, Boycott is part of history we're taught in primary school. – TRiG Jul 05 '11 at 13:13

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 22 '11 at 20:51

Yes, just because the origin of a word is originally a person's name doesn't automatically mean it is always capitalised.

For example, a "spoonerism" is a type of speech error that allegedly somebody called Spooner tended to make. A "nosy parker" is somebody exhibiting a behaviour that allegedly somebody called "Parker" had.

Notice how in these examples, and unlike cases such as "Chomskyan", "Thatcherite", we're not naming something after that person's deliberate doctrine/invention.

There may also be a factor involved of time and/or how much the person in question is still known to contemporary speakers (which may be why we'd tend to write "sadistic" rather than "Sadistic", for example).

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 22 '11 at 22:35

2

The diesel. A guillotine. I guess you're looking for nouns without suffixes only?

To lynch (John was quicker). cesarean. Wow, never heard about that:

goethite |ˌgoʊθaɪt|
noun
a dark reddish-brown or yellowish-brown mineral consisting of oxyhydroxide iron, occurring typically as masses of fibrous crystals.
ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from the name of J.W. von Goethe + -ite

tsar/czar – ORIGIN from Russian tsar’, representing Latin Caesar.

Found a series: einsteinium, nobelium, etc.

That's fun.

edited Feb 22 '11 at 22:35

apaderno

59,185

answered Feb 22 '11 at 21:27

thyx

154

Elements in the periodic table are lower cased by convention, so they were never initially capitalized. – Scott Mitchell Feb 22 '11 at 21:41
Not in my native language ;-) you're right, that's why I wrote 'series'. – thyx Feb 22 '11 at 21:51
3

This answer may have some applicable words, but it doesn't read well at all. – JYelton Feb 22 '11 at 23:40

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 22 '11 at 22:32

1

The one I can think of off the top of my head are "cartesian," as in cartesian plane, named after Rene Descartes. My second though was "hermaphrodite," but that's not exactly named after a person...

I also found a really big list of these "eponyms." Many of them are not capitalised.

http://foxdreamer.tripod.com/page2.html

Have fun! :)

answered Feb 22 '11 at 22:32

kitukwfyer

3,753

1

Thanks for sharing. Interesting side-note: I don't recall ever not seeing Cartesian capitalized, at least not in my university textbooks. – Scott Mitchell Feb 23 '11 at 00:23
I guess cartesian goes both ways, then. I rarely see it capitalised. Weird. – kitukwfyer Feb 23 '11 at 00:51

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 22 '11 at 23:12

1

I found out two last night, watching Melvyn Bragg's excellent series about the English language.

"orrery" was named for the Earl of Orrery, who funded the making of the first modern one.
"johnson" for the male organ, reportedly named for Samuel Johnson during Jane Austen's time because 'he would stand up to anybody'.

answered Feb 22 '11 at 23:12

staticsan

597

3

If we can count orrery, we should probably count sandwich too (named after the Earl of Sandwich). – TMN Mar 07 '11 at 13:47

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 07 '11 at 11:45

1

A herculean task (only capitalized if it refers to one of the actual tasks of Hercules)

answered Mar 07 '11 at 11:45

The English Chicken

8,480

score 1 · Answer 9 · edited Feb 15 '15 at 22:21

1

The common word "guy", which comes from Guy Fawkes (or, more specifically, burned effigies of him)

Named from Guy Fawkes (1570-1606), an English Catholic hanged for his role in the Gunpowder Plot.

(colloquial) A male
A new guy started at the office today.

(Wiktionary)

edited Feb 15 '15 at 22:21

Andrew Leach

101,901

answered Feb 15 '15 at 03:31

weronika

111

score 0 · Answer 10 · edited Feb 22 '11 at 22:38

narcissus.

Try some personal names:
(Oh, peter, too)

louis |ˈluwəs| |ˈluwi| (also louis d'or )
noun (pl. same)
a gold coin issued in France between 1640 and 1793.
• another term for napoleon (sense 2).
ORIGIN from Louis, the name of many kings of France.

joe |ʤoʊ|
noun informal
1 coffee. [ORIGIN: 1940s: of unknown origin.]
2 an ordinary man: the average joe. [ORIGIN: mid 19th cent.: nickname for the given name Joseph; compare with Joe Blow.]

john |dʒɑn|
noun informal
1 a toilet.
2 a prostitute's client.
ORIGIN early 20th century (sense 2): from the given name John, used from late Middle English as a form of address to a man, or to denote various occupations, including that of priest (late Middle English) and policeman (mid 17th century).

Other physical units, e.g.

henry |ˈhɛnri| (abbreviation: H)
noun (plural henries |ˈhɛnriz| or henrys |ˈhɛnriz|) Physics
the SI unit of inductance, equal to an electromotive force of one volt in a closed circuit with a uniform rate of change of current of one ampere per second.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: named after Joseph Henry (1797–1878), the American physicist who discovered the phenomenon.

All physical units named after a person are lowercase when spelled out (to avoid confusion with the person) but uppercase abbreviations. — mgb, May 30 '11 at 22:12
Joe as in coffee (which wasn't named after Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels who repealed the officers wine mess) brings us to grog, which was named after Captain Grog, who diluted the British Navy's rum ration by 50%. Coffee joe is probably a shortening of jamoke, which is a shortening of Java-Mocha, where the best stuff came from in the 1930s. — Phil Sweet, Feb 10 '20 at 02:00

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 10 '20 at 00:42

0

I was told the only legitimate and recognizable math term named after a person that is definitively no longer (or maybe never was) capitalized is the word "abelian", named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Abel, meaning commutative essentially.

answered Feb 10 '20 at 00:42

John Jiang

105

Are there examples of terms named after a person that are no longer capitalized?

11 Answers11

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