March 7, 2000

eponym

What word describes proper nouns that have come to be words with their own meaning, such as Scrooge, Pollyanna, Xerox, Scotch tape?

Scrooge 'a miserly person' (from Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly misanthrope in Dickens' A Christmas Carol) and Pollyanna 'a blindly optimistic person' (from the heroine of Eleanor Porter's novels) are examples of a common type of English word formation. The linguistic term is eponym 'a real or imaginary person from whom a word is derived.' The term eponym also refers to 'a word derived from a person's name.' For example, Seatlh, an Indian chief, is the eponym of Seattle, and conversely, Seattle is an eponym derived from Seatlh. Said yet another way, Seatlh is the eponymous Indian chief who gave Seattle its name. Eponym (pronounced "EP-uh-nim") and eponymous (pronounced "eh-PON-uh-mus") are ultimately derived from a Greek adjective, literally meaning 'upon name.'

In addition to Scrooge, Dickens' novels are the source of other eponyms. Pecksniffian (from Seth Pecksniff, a character in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit) describes someone who embodies the trait of 'hypocritically affecting benevolence or high moral principles'. Not only do literary characters spawn eponyms, but many eponymous adjectives are derived from the name of an author. For example, we often use the term Dickensian to describe eccentric characters, squalid conditions, plots full of coincidences, or humor mixed with pathos. If you're wondering why we say Dickensian and Faulknerian as opposed to Kafkaesque and Byronic, there is no hard-and-fast rule as to which suffix is correct. In fact we can say Whitmanesque or Whitmanian and Voltairean or Voltairian. And, as far as I know, there is no rhyme or reason as to why Whitman and Keats are eponyms, but Poe and Shelley are not; perhaps it is poetic justice.

Eponyms are formed in various ways. They can be compound nouns (Melba toast), verbs (lynch), altered forms (dunce), suffixed forms (galvanize), or even blends (gerrymander). Sometimes they take the possessive form (Alzheimer's disease).

Some eponyms, such as boycott, were originally capitalized, and others, such as maverick, were always lowercase. Some are still capitalized, such as Pollyanna, and others are written either way. Both scrooge and Scrooge would be correct.

The other terms you mention, Xerox and Scotch tape, are trademarked names, but they are not based on a person's name, the way some other trademarks such as Listerine and Levi's are. There is no linguistic term for a trademark that is so ubiquitous that it stands for the thing itself, as in Band-Aid for 'adhesive bandage.' It's really an example of synecdoche, the term for the rhetorical device of substituting the particular for the general.

Carol