Eponyms Etcetra

Mae �Life Jacket� West (1893 � 1980)

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Mary Jane West began her career at a very early age by performing vaudeville and burlesque acts on the stage. She shot into headlines in 1926 by writing and directing a Broadway show �Sex�, which resulted in her arrest on charges of obscenity. Paramount Pictures signed her up in 1932 and she acted in several blockbusters through the thirties and early forties. West scripted most of her films and artfully managed to circumvent the censorship code through double entendres and sexual innuendoes. Though repeatedly slammed by the censors, the audiences adored her. Mae West is credited with such quotable quotes � �It�s better to be looked over than overlooked�.
Mae West was a buxom woman, reportedly with a 43-size bust. This generous physical endowment coupled with her popularity as the sex symbol of Hollywood led the British Royal Air Force to name an inflatable life jacket after her during World War-II, much to her delight. In mid forties, Mae West returned to the stage and went on to make record breaking nightclub acts, radio shows and television appearances. She died of a stroke in 1980.

Cardigan and Raglan

Two British military officers who fought together in the Crimean War have been immortalised through two items of apparel � Cardigan and Raglan.

James Thomas Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan (1797�1868) was a British general who led the disastrous cavalry charge at Balaclava in 1854 in the Crimean War, immortalised by Alfred Lord Tennyson in �The Charge of the Light Brigade�. Three hundred men were killed or injured though Cardigan himself returned unscathed. Cardigan was always impeccably dressed and the knitted vest he wore to protect himself from the severe Russian winter was named after him in honour of his courageous though stupid act. The collarless, three-button V-neck that we know as the cardigan today bears little resemblance to the original.

Cardigan�s infamous blunder was the result of a miscommunication from Lord Raglan, commander of the British troops down his chain of command.
Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron of Raglan (1788�1855) joined the army in 1804 and lost an arm at the battle of Waterloo. Raglan became secretary to Duke of Wellington and succeeded him as master general of ordinance. In the Crimean War Raglan proved himself as a brave officer and was made field marshal after the battle of Inkerman. The raglan, an overcoat in which the sleeves go directly to the neck without shoulder seams, was named for Lord Raglan.

A List of Eponyms

Here is a List of about 170 Eponyms

William �Pie-Tin� Frisbie

The Frisbee, a saucer shaped circular plastic disk that is tossed in the air and caught, acquired its name from William Russell Frisbie, though he did not invent it. In 1870�s Frisbie bought out a bakery in Connecticut, USA and named it as Frisbie Pie Company. After his death in 1903, his son Joseph expanded the company�s operations and shops were opened in many cities.
In the 1920�s students at Yale University created a game of catch in which they tossed metal pie tins to each other. These tins were from the Frisbie Pie Company, which had become very popular by then. The players used to shout �Frisbie� to warn bystanders of the approaching airborne tin.
The actual saucer shaped disk was created by Walter Frederick Morrison in 1948 and was called Flying Saucer in keeping with the people�s fascination for UFO�s. Morrison�s improved design was acquired by the Toy Company Wham- O and marketed as Pluto Platter.
When Rich Knerr, one of the company�s partners visited the campus of Ivy League he heard the term Frisbie and Frisbieing. He liked the term and renamed the toy as Frisbee, misspelling the name but getting it phonetically correct.

JULES �Trapeze� LEOTARD

Leotard, the close fitting dress worn by gymnasts, ballet dancers and exercise enthusiasts takes it name after its inventor Jules Leotard (1842-1870). Born to a gymnastics teacher, Jules Leotard took to gymnastics at a young age. He joined the Circus and in November 1859, became the first person to swing from a trapeze, which was his invention. His act caused a sensation in Paris, and soon other circus performers were trying out his technique. And along with this new technique came his other invention: a close, body-hugging costume that allowed for unencumbered, unrestricted movement.
The original leotard consisted of a close-fitting suit of knitted jersey, which reached to the wrists and ankles; the woman's version came with a short-fringed skirt. He once urged men to �put on a more natural garb that does not hide your best features.� Leotard's popularity grew, and eventually other performers were adopting both his moves and his costumes. Eventually, the �leotard� found its way into the ballet studios of Paris and onto the bodies of ballerinas and ballet dancers.
Tragically, Leotard�s life ended at the young age of 28 when he contracted smallpox. But his legacy endures both in circus and on dance stages of the world. Today, the leotard is the accepted uniform of dancers around the world and is designed in many attractive patterns, colours and materials.

AMELIA 'Reforms' BLOOMER

Bloomers refer to a pair of women�s loose knee-length shorts or �bifurcated skirt� and is derived from Amelia Bloomer, who actively espoused the adoption of a similar outfit in the 1850�s.
Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818 -1894) was a leading champion of women�s rights. Even as a 21-year-old schoolteacher she had a well-articulated feminist philosophy. Married to a New York newspaper editor, in 1849 she started publishing a monthly paper called �The Lily�, which focused on women�s issues and interests. However Amelia is often remembered more for a fashion statement of independence than for her fight in support of women's rights.
Elizabeth Smith Miller, a cousin of Amelia�s friend and neighbour returned from a tour of Europe and started wearing Turkish pantaloons gathered at the ankle under a long skirt that reached below the knee, with the bodice free of constricting whale bones and corset ties. The comfortable dress was much lighter and cooler than the prevailing restrictive dress of those days. It also allowed free movement and easy breathing without the bones and wires that turned the female body into an exaggerated �figure 8�.
Amelia passionately endorsed the outfit in The Lily and wore it herself to speaking engagements. In the February 1851 issue of The Lily, Amelia wrote about the then prevailing dress style � �how painful to the sensitive female must it be to strive to walk, her dress flapping in the breeze and assuming all the gyrations of a ship�s sails in a storm�. Describing the advantages of the new dress, she wrote - �small waists and whalebones can be dispensed with, and we shall be allowed breathing room; and our forms will be what nature made them.�
Women around the country wrote to Amelia to obtain a pattern. When woodcuts of Amelia wearing the �Freedom Suit� was published in the September 1851 issue of The Lily it quickly became known as �bloomer costume� even though she did not create or introduce the dress.
Bloomers and Amelia were attacked as decadent from various quarters. She gave up the dress after eight years because men used it as a target to divert attention from the issues she considered more important.

MAVERICK The NONCONFORMIST

The word maverick, which means an independent-minded person or a nonconformist, is derived from Samuel Maverick, who did not practise the convention of branding his livestock.
Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-1870) was a Texas based lawyer, landowner and legislator. He was imprisoned during the struggle for independence from Mexico.
Maverick acquired a 400-strong herd of cattle from one of his client in lieu of a $1200 debt. Since he was busy with other activities, he was not in a position to take proper care of his cattle. They were never branded and were allowed to roam freely. Neighbouring ranchers took advantage of this and after seizing straying animals branded them as their own.
Finally when he sold is ranch to one Toutant de Beauregard, the contract included every unbranded animal on the ranch. Beauregard claimed every unbranded animal that he came upon as a �maverick�. Thus the term maverick was first applied to an unbranded animal that stood out from the herd and later by extension to a person who stood out in a crowd because of his views or beliefs.
There is an alternative, though apocryphal story about the origin of this eponym. Before the Puritans arrived to establish Boston in 1630, one Sam Maverick is believed to have been living on a nearby island. He became the only Bostonian permitted to vote without church affiliation and was hence considered as an oddball.
Maverick is thus an eponym with the rare distinction of having two people behind it.

QUISLING THE TRAITOR

Vikud Quisling has the ignominy of lending his name to a most undesirable quality in a man � treachery

Vikud Quisling (1887 - 1945) began his career in the Norwegian Army and rose to the rank of a major. He was the Minister of Defence between 1931 and 1933. In 1933 Quisling formed the Nasjonal Samling (National Unity) Party. The party�s earlier mass base among farmers started dwindling as it increasingly adopted a Pro-German and anti-Semitic policy. Quisling became a cult figure in the party.

In 1939 Quisling visited Germany and in a secret meeting with Adolf Hitler sowed the idea of a German invasion of Norway. On April 9, 1940 when the Germans invaded Norway, Quisling committed his infamous treachery by his coup d�etat. In the confusion of invasion he announced the formation of an ad-hoc government, hoping that the Germans would support him. His government lasted only five days, since the Germans sought more direct control over the occupied territory. But the Reichkomissar, Josef Terboven thought it more prudent to prop him up and in 1942, Quisling was made Prime Minister. He retained this position till May 1945, when the Germans surrendered.

After the surrender, Quisling along with many members of his party were arrested and tried for treason. On October 24 1945, he was executed by a firing squad. Today quisling means a traitor in English and several European languages.

Readings
Definitive biography by Hans Fredrik Dahl

Eponyms

Eponyms are words derived from names of real persons or fictitious characters. For example � Sandwich, Boycott, Cardigan etc. This blog will try to capture the story behind several eponyms. Occasionally it will digress into other fascinating things about words

An affair with words

It has been a long and torrid love affair with them and has given me pleasure in several different ways. They come in different sizes and shapes, but each with a distinct nuance and flavour. I dig into them deeply to explore their roots. I squeeze them in crossword squares. Fix them up in scrabble boards. Caress them with rhymes in verses and sonnets. Wrestle with them in lurid prose. Cavort with them in jumbles and acrostics. Play around with them in anagrams. I love them all � acronyms, synonyms, homonyms, antonyms. I look for them between pages of dictionaries and thesaurus. My favourite nymph is however 'eponym' and this blog is dedicated to eponyms.