Friday, September 28, 2007
What's in a Name?
Did you ever stop to wonder where certain words came from? (OK, probably not. You all have busy lives, I know.) But if you
did
stop to think about it, you might be surprised to learn that a lot of words are actually
eponyms
.
According to an article on CNN
article on CNN
, a lot of odd words were actually named after people. Like the word 'dunce' was named after John Duns Scotus. A lot of people thought the guy's scientific theories were pretty dumb. Soon anyone with a dumb theory was a 'dunseman.' Later, the word morphed into the word we know today.
That's pretty bad.
There are some people who have accomplished good things, and their names have become words. Take Gabriel Fahrenheit's name, for example. I mean, everyone likes knowing what the temperature is and all.
But if my name were to become an eponym, what would it mean? Would 'pulling a Jessica' mean succeeding while be kind, generous, and all-together awesome? (An example of usage: Wow, Mike got voted captain of the football team today. He deserves it because he works really hard and lead his team to victory. He really pulled a Jessica.)
More than likely though, 'pulling a Jessica' will come to mean spilling soda on your keyboard and having to call the computer guys to get you a new one.
I don't think I like that one bit.
So, what other words do you know that are eponyms? If your name becomes an eponym, what will it mean?
Posted by
Jessica
on 9/28/2007
4:22 PM
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