Eponyms and the stories within
Ratna Raman
Eponyms are usually nouns. Eponym (from Greek eponymos) refers to a name belonging to a person or place in real and imagined time; i.e. history and myth. The children of Aditi are known eponymously as Adityas, while Diti’s children are known as Daityas.
Eponymous is an adjective. It qualifies reminiscently what was done by the person whose initial action began it all. Periods of English history such as Elizabethan, Georgian and Victorian derive their nomenclature from the first name of the presiding monarch of that particular time.
Take for instance, the word ‘mentor’. Very few of us know that Mentor is the name of a figure in Greek mythology under whose care Odysseus left his son Telemachus before proceeding to war. Since then mentors have continued to guide and nurture youngsters.
Colleges, hospitals, stadiums medicines, medical procedures, colonies can be eponymous. Lady Irwin College and Lady Hardinge Medical College are named after wives of colonial administrators. Jehangirpuri, a colony in New Delhi, gets its name from Mughal emperor Jehangir. India’s prominent first family took the official surname of Nehru, after they were addressed for generations by locals in Kashmir as ‘Nehri’ (those living near the nehar or canal).
The sandwich derived its name from the eating habits of the Earl of Sandwich. A sportsman who loved food but kept away from table etiquette due to his passion for the outdoors, the Earl of Sandwich advised his staff to serve meat between two slices of bread.
We learnt our first eponymous word during history lessons at school, while studying the Swadeshi Movement —the collective ‘boycott’ of all imported garments. Charles Boycott was a land agent in Ireland (1880s) who invited the wrath of the peasants when he levied excessive taxes on them, on behalf of Lord Erne. The peasants refused to turn up for work and the local populace refused to serve Boycott food, drink or enable lodging. Boycott was forced to ask England for help.
The word ‘maverick’ evolved from the acts of Samuel Maverick, a lawyer and cattle owner in Texas, who refused to brand his cattle. Unbranded cattle that belonged to him were identified as mavericks (1860s). Today, an unorthodox person who follows his own lead and cares little for customary practice is termed a maverick.
Slipping someone a ‘mickey’ in their drink is another eponymous usage, drawing from Mickey Finn, a Chicago bartender in the 1890s who robbed unsuspecting customers by adding knockout drugs to their alcohol.
The word ‘lynch’ existed until recently only in the annals of American history and literature. A Lynch law outlined by Charles Lynch to punish offenders without fair trial in the 1780s took on overtones of mob hanging and shooting. By the time of the American Civil War, ‘lynching’ implied the hanging of black people by white mobs. In the novel, Huckleberry Finn, Sherburn cold-bloodedly shoots a defenceless drunk man dead and then upbraids the mob gathered to lynch him. Lynching exposes the moral depravity at the heart of the mob and the vulnerability of the victim.
Eponyms are important instances of collective memory; and contain stories that enable us to observe the dimensions of life.
