If you’re a regular reader (AKA my mum), then you might remember words of the week maverick, bowdlerise and dunce, all of which are eponyms, or named after people. Well, I thought I’d look into other words which you may or may not already know were named after people. So here are seven of the most interesting. Sadly, they’re all (with one notable exception) named for men, something which perhaps might change in the future (but probably won’t). Sigh.
Bloomers
Let’s start this list with that notable exception.
Blooming marvellous Amelia
When we think of bloomers today, we think of pants. But back in the 19th century, bloomers were women’s garments for the lower body developed as a comfortable alternative to the heavy, constricting dresses they normally wore. And they’re named after a lady called Amelia Jenks Bloomer. Unlike pretty much everyone else on this list she didn’t actually have anything to do with inventing bloomers – in fact she was an American woman’s rights advocate. They’re named after her because they were seen as revolutionary outfits – presumably because they freed up women to do things like wave their arms around or breathe comfortably – and she was one of their strongest advocates.
Amelia was also the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women. So all in all she was pretty freaking awesome.
Chauvinism
This one’s a bit dodgy, because there’s no proof that the man it’s named after – Nicolas Chauvin – actually existed (he was definitely a character in a play called Cocarde Tricolore (1831), but it’s not clear if that character was based on a real person or not). But I’ve put it in anyway because it’s quite interesting to see how the word has evolved. The story goes that Chauvin, a soldier, was – despite being badly wounded and having no money – still blindly loyal to his leader, Napoleon. And he continued to be, even after Nappers (as no one has ever called him) abdicated. So ‘chauvinism’ came to mean fanatical patriotism, even in the face of overwhelming opposition.
It was first used after ‘male’ in a 1935 play called ‘Till the Day I Die’ by someone called Clifford Odets (nope, me neither).
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is a large burial chamber, usually above ground and reserved for poshos. It’s named after Mausolus, who was a ruler of part of the Greek Empire in the 4th century BCE. When he died he was interred in a spectacular chamber in Halicarnassus, which his wife AND SISTER (ewwwwww), Artemisia II of Caria, called the ‘mausoleum’.
Back in the day Mausolus’ mausoleum (try saying that after a couple of shandies) was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, which is presumably how the word ‘mausoleum’ came into everyday use. It also outlasted all the other wonders, only to be toppled by a load of earthquakes between the 12th and 15th centuries.
Diesel
No relation to Vin Diesel
Diesel is named after the inventor of the diesel engine, Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel. Despite having the most German name ever, he was actually born in Paris in 1858, the son of Bavarian immigrants. He invented and ran the first successful diesel engine in 1897, and gave his name to the fuel that powered it.
Diesel came to a rather sorry end, disappearing from a steamer boat in 1913. He was on his way to London to meet some British Royal Navy bods to talk about powering British submarines with his engines. After having dinner and retiring to his cabin, he was never seen alive again. Ten days later a Dutch boat came across a corpse floating in the North Sea. They didn’t bring it on board because it was gross, but they did retrieve the personal items, which Diesel’s son later identified as belonging to his dad.
Some people think Diesel killed himself because he was having financial woes – he’d left a bag with his wife shortly after he disappeared, alongside instructions not to open it til the following week. When she did, she found 200,000 German marks in cash (around £875,000 in today’s money) and financial statements showing that their bank accounts were pretty much empty. There’s another theory that he was murdered, as apparently he’d refused to grant German forces the exclusive rights to his invention – and don’t forget he was on his way to Blighty to talk to the British Navy. Sadly, it looks like we’ll never know what happened to poor old Diesel.
Leotard
Jules Léotard – try not to look at his crotch
Jules Léotard (born some time between 1839 and 1870) was a French acrobatic performer. He created a new type of one-piece streamlined garment which made it easier for him to do his trapeze schizz. It also showed off his physique which both the ladies and men enjoyed, so much so that someone by the name of George Leybourne wrote a song about him in 1867.
Jules didn’t actually call his costume a leotard. This came about much later in 1886 (I’m not sure who did call it that, sorry), after he’d died. He didn’t perish from anything trapeze-related BTW – he probably died from smallpox. So that sucks.
Silhouette
Étienne de Silhouette was a French finance minister for Louis XV. In 1759 there was a credit crunch in France (or a crunch de credit – I’m well good at languages) as a result of the Seven Years’ War. Silhouette imposed severe auterity measures on the French people, and his name soon came to be used to descibe anything done on the cheap. And because Silhouette’s favourite hobby was, you’ve guessed it, making shadow portraits out of paper – a much cheaper technique than painting someone – these soon took his name. Well, it could have been worse.