I’ve got two:
Spoonerisms, the switching of consonants or morphemes between two words for comic effect; named after William Archibald Spooner, an Oxford Don who dropped many in his speech.
Bowdlerize, for editing a work to remove all the “objectionable” (or “interesting”) bits. Named for Thomas Bowdler, who cleaned up Shakespeare for women and children.
Gerrymandering is named for Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, combined with salamander (which wiggly, slippery critter one of Gov. Gerry’s electoral district re-mappings was said to resemble).
Mentor was the tutor of Odysseus’ son, Telemachus.
We often call someone with a loud voice stentorian. Stentor was the herald of the Greek forces during the Trojan War. He was supposed to have a voice as loud as fifty men shouting.
Zeppelin is named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin who first designed one. The term lynching was named after Charles Lynch, a jurist in th 1700s.
The watt as a measurement of energy conversion was named for James Watt
When you add in the balaclava, which was named not after a person, but after a battle site from the Crimean War, I’m always inclined to refer to that particular conflict as the Sweater War.
The foxtrot takes its name not from its resemblance to the meanderings of a canine, but from vaudeville performer Harry Fox, who invented the dance.
Not a common noun, but also not a trademark: Angel Falls honors no celestial being. Aviator Jimmie Angel, who discovered the falls during a 1933 search for a potentially valuable ore bed, was honored when the English language needed a term for Kerepakupai merú.
Theirs not to question it.
Theirs but to do and knit.
Although interestingly enough, Gerry was apparently pronounced with a hard G, and gerrymander is not.
I am surprised at the absence of America from Amerigo Vespucci
also foreigners like:
braille from* Louis Braille*
**chauvinism ** from Nicolas Chauvin
martinet from Jean Martinet
nicotine from Jean Nicot
pasteurize from Louis Pasteur
quixotic from Don Quixote
saxophone from *Antoine Sax
*
Henry Shrapnel invented a particulary nasty kind of ammuntion back in the 19th century.
Many, dare I say most SI units are named after people.
Amp
Kelvin
Hertz
Newton
Pascal
Joule
Coulomb
Volt
Farad
Ohm
Siemens
Weber
Henry
Celsius
Becquerel
Gray
Sievert
There are also Planck units (named after Max Planck) including Dirac’s constant, Coloumb’s force constant and Boltzmann’s constant, but these are starting to stray from the OP.
Yesterday I saw a shoe shop advertising “plimsoles”. The name “plimsoll” has nothing to do with soles, everything to do with the guy who put loading-lines on the sides of ships, but was not, per Wikipedia, the shoe’s inventor.
Santorum.
**Kafkaesque ** from the famous writer’s name.
Oops…
Slinks away in shame.
Pull a brody or take a brody
It seems more of a New York expression
from the Urban Dictionary
A “Brody” is a miraculous maneuver or stunt.
This comes from “Steve Brody”, the first man to survive the 135 foot jump from the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1885, right after the Brooklyn Bridge was built, Brody bragged he could survive the fall, and did. His amazing survival caused a media sensation, and the phrase “pull a Brody” has been used since then. (Only four people have ever survived the 135 foot drop, which is equivalent to jumping from the top of a fourteen story building.)
In 1885, Steve Brody owned a saloon. Parts of Brody’s saloon still survive today in New York’s Empire Room, which is fitted with mahogany panels and gold leaf plaster impressions recovered from Steve Brody’s Saloon.
The miraculous 1885 survival of Brody made him very famous. From that time to this, New Yorkers have talked about “pulling a Brody” or “taking a Brody”, referring to Brody’s miracle jump and survival.
In 120 years, obviously, some people have forgotten where “pull a brody” came from. Do some research on Steve Brody and you will see this is the actual origin of the phrase
I have to mention a very common word, derived from the name of a man who may have been my ancestor: “guy”, coming from the name of a Guy who tried to blow up the English parliament about 400 years ago.
(My grandfather’s middle name was Fawkes, which supports the family tradition that Guy was up there in the family tree).
