# People Who Didn't Adhere To The Belief System That Bears Their Name **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 20, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378 "2017-10-20T18:29:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/1 "2017-10-20T18:29:01Z")
Victoria wasn’t Victorian. Christ wasn’t Christian. Keynes wasn’t Keynesian. Ras Tafari wasn’t Rastafarian. Who else had a religion, attitude, movement, system of beliefs, etc., named after them, but that they themselves didn’t adhere to? ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/2 "2017-10-20T18:30:08Z")
Ayn Rand? ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/3 "2017-10-20T18:47:46Z")
Karl Marx perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/4 "2017-10-20T18:55:26Z")
Can you explain the Victoria one? As well as perhaps the Keynes one, though that’s from my lack of knowledge about the details. Pelagianism was probably not what Pelagius believed. It is still debated whether Machiavelli was being serious or not. Nicolas Chauvin was not a sexist but a nationalist (it retains this meaning in French). Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus was not a Fabian. Do they have to be -isms? Schrödinger didn’t believe that the cat thought experiment was true, he intentionally made it ridiculous to poke holes in a specific theory. Jacobitism wasn’t a Jacob but a James 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/5 "2017-10-20T18:58:36Z")
Martin Luther wasn’t a Lutheran. He was Catholic. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/6 "2017-10-20T19:34:59Z")
Darwin wasn’t a Social Darwinist. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/7 "2017-10-20T19:40:41Z")
The Kardashians aren’t really Cardassian. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/8 "2017-10-20T19:49:36Z")
“Victorian” was never used to refer to a particular belief system, but an era. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/9 "2017-10-21T05:45:43Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Darwin wasn’t a Social Darwinist. The bigger problem is that Herbert Spencer, who coined the term Survival of the Fittest while arguing that entire ethnicities (we are, after all, merely variants of the human race), were inherently unequal due to genetic and geographic/historical circumstance. The phrase is commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin and the term Social Darwinism came later.# I really would rather the term be “Spencerist” because the currently misattributed term gives a good man a bad name. —G! # There’s a term for that. I don’t think it’s “retcon” but something similar having less to do with literary explanations and more to do with history and perceptions of culture. I wonder if Freud was prone to uttering Freudian slips… ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/10 "2017-10-21T05:54:09Z")
Jung was old! ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/11 "2017-10-21T07:17:52Z")
Puritans weren’t actually Puritanical in terms of sexuality and expression which is how almost all people use the word for. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/12 "2017-10-21T11:29:11Z")
Poe wasn’t always poetic. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/13 "2017-10-21T11:40:24Z")
Anders Celsius’s thermometer was the reverse of the current Celsius scale, with freezing at 100 and boiling at 0. And Daniel Fahtenheit lied about his stature. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/14 "2017-10-21T11:54:55Z")
**Epicurus** didn’t advocate Hedonism. In Ancient Greece, a core central question was “Live based on Virtue or Pleasure?” Virtue = a set of values that you base decisions on, even if they limit pleasure at the time. Pleasure = living in the Now, and learning to appreciate the situation you are in. Wherever you go, there you are. They are in truth a Duality, held separate to help contemplation. Epicureanism got twisted by its opponents over the centuries. It was about Zen Be Here Now-ness, not Dionysian decadence. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/15 "2017-10-21T11:59:32Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Jung was old! Freud was a fraud? ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/16 "2017-10-21T14:46:00Z")
John Duns Scotus wasn’t a dunce. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/17 "2017-10-21T15:17:46Z")
Oh, oh,…Bush had a Quayle (lame, I know) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/18 "2017-10-21T15:29:40Z")
Thomas Kuhn, the paradigm shift man, later on said he wasn’t a Khunian. What he meant was that the Kuhnians had taken his ideas far beyond their applicability. Every person with a new idea was calling it a paradigm shift. The case of Keynes was curious. I consider myself a Keynsian, but that means that I think that during a recession/depression the government ought to run deficits, but during good times, should have a surplus and pay off the debts. Like Clinton did. Sometimes I call myself a Josephian. But Keynsian has come to mean (at least by its detractors) as always having a deficit. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/19 "2017-10-21T17:29:53Z")
Jane Roe a/k/a [Norma McCorvey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey) changed her mind and became a fanatical anti-abortion activist. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378/20 "2017-10-21T17:36:22Z")
Ellen James wasn’t an Ellen Jamesian (she was fictional, too, of course, but she’s still a good example). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-didnt-adhere-to-the-belief-system-that-bears-their-name/799378.md?page=2)