There are a lot of items that in Britain are named for a person (e.g. wellingtons, mackintosh, etc.). However in the US we refer to them with names that are more descriptive (e.g. rubber boots, raincoat) of their nature or function. Why the difference?
The only theories I’ve been able to come up with so far are:
British culture’s love of history and the names remind us of that history
In Britain, you can’t travel very far before reaching other countries with a different language. So, if you call it a mackintosh, the French, Germans and Spanish can still use the same word, just pronounced a bit differently. Whereas if you called it a raincoat, you’d have to use a new word in every single country. Sadly, Google translate kind of tears this argument apart.
Please resist the temptation to say one is better or more proper. Whichever approach you’re accustomed to will seem right, and the other as slightly odd (or worse).
It seems to me that there are plenty of words common in American English that are named after people. Do you have some evidence that this is more common in British English?
My thought on seeing the thread title was to think of warships. The British use descriptive (if somewhat aggrandizing) names like HMS Daring, HMS Dauntless, and HMS Vigilant; some front-line American ships are the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, and USS John C. Stennis.
Aside from my own experience (a couple of BBC shows, 2-3 UK comedians, and handful of newspaper articles related to those shows) not really. But what else do non-linguists have to judge language on? I did cite 2 examples of the phenomenon I was discussing.
Cardigan is more commonly called a sweater. ‘Bowie knife’, ‘Dewar Flask’, ‘diesel engine’, ‘doppler radar’, ‘ferris wheel’, ‘franklin stove’, and at least half your other examples, are specialized variants of a larger class of items. In the pattern I described, it’d simply be called “a bowie”. A great example of this is “a hoover vacuum”; in the UK it’s simply called “a hoover”, and is sometimes used as a verb (e.g. “Could you hoover the front room?” Joe Brand on QI S04e07).
The [personname] [itemtype] form, which is most of your list, isn’t what the OP is talking about for two reasons. For one, it’s using a person’s name for a specific type of item, not for the general class, and the second is that it still includes the word for the class of item. We don’t call knives “Bowies”, all revolvers “Colts”, all raised highway reflector’s “Botts”, all flasks “Dewar”, all polls “Gallops” and so on. The fact that you have Diesel, Stirling, and Wankel engines all listed highlights this; one or the other would be the term for ‘engine’, not each one for a different type of engine. Some do ditch the item type but still refer to a specific subtype of the item, like jaccuzi, theremin, or uzi. Some of what you listed aren’t even items; Braille is a type of writing and the Heimlich maneuver is an action.
Only a few things like the guillotine, leotard, and shapnel actually fit the type of name the OP is talking about. Two of those come from French and one from the UK, so are really loan words that happen to be ‘items named after people’ in their country of origin instead named by Americans. I don’t know the answer to the OP’s question, but that style of naming much more in the UK than US.
I’m not personally convinced that there is any real preference for naming things after people in the UK. For the ‘hoover’ example (aside from the fact that we do call t a vacuum fairly often as well) I would guess the reason it was taken up here is because it is not associated with a
person’s name in this country. Especially at the time it was introduced, if someone was not interested in US culture, the only time they’d encounter the word ‘hoover’ was in connection with the appliance. I don’t think that’s more significant than the US using the brand name ‘band-aid’ as a generic, which would be called a plaster or a sticking plaster in the UK.
The first name people are given when they encounter a novel item tends to stick, regardless of if that’s that of a person, a brand or a descriptive word.
Several of the other examples are used in a shortened form most of the time, wellingtons are very rarely called that, they’re wellies, and a mackintosh is almost always a mac, when it’s not called a waterproof. I don’t see any attempt to associate them with a person’s name, not now. The trend for naming inventions after the inventor (or the person who popularised them) is now decidedly old fashioned.
It’s commonly used in certain contexts to distinguish between different types of sweaters. For example a description of the item on a website or label, or in writing about fashion will not refer to simply to “sweater” , but to “cardigan” or “crewneck” or “turtleneck”. I might tell my husband to “grab my blue cardigan” so he doesn’t grab my blue pullover sweater. But I’ve never heard someone say “I’ll be ready to leave as soon as I get my cardigan” or “It’s a little chilly. Do you have a cardigan I can borrow?” or a mother tell her child " I’m cold, put on a cardigan". I’m pretty sure those contexts are more commonly encountered than the ones that require the distinction to be made.
We’ve done our share of it too; Xerox, Kleenex, Google, etc. We even have clauses in trademark law that protect “genericized” use of a trademarked name if it becomes common enough.
it just seems kind of easier to refer to something by the name of either the inventor or the most common maker of it.
We could be getting close to root of my confusion here. Technically/legally, a “band aid” is called an “adhesive bandage” (unless it’s made by a the company that owns the trademark on the term “band aid”). However, as you’ve noted the general public doesn’t always respect trademarks. So, are ‘wellies’ and ‘macs’ technically called something else (that most people know but don’t use in everyday conversation), in that same manner?
In the US when a company invents a completely new product it’s known as whatever that company wants to call it, while that company is the only one making it. When another company wants to make and sell that item, we have to come up with a generic name for that product, whomever makes it (i.e. a generic name). It seems like that second step (used to be) omitted in popular culture more often in the UK.
Again, I’m not saying which one is right. I’m trying to understand the factors that behind this difference.
Can you point me to some more info about that, please? I’m always curious to see how common practices (i.e. the stuff that just works, somehow) get encoded into law.
