Difference between revisions of "Words Derived From Names of Persons"

Revision as of 11:56, 12 November 2018

The words for some objects, activities, etc., derive from the name of an individual with whom the object, activity, etc., is particularly associated. For example, the word 'boycott', meaning 'the refusal to have any dealings with a person or organisation as a protest against their behaviour' - as when, e.g., one is unwilling to buy the products of a company because one strongly disapproves of its activities or policies - comes from the name of an Irishman, Capt. C.C. Boycott (1832-1897), who was land agent for the Earl of Erne in county Mayo in Ireland, and was shunned as part of a campaign of protest when he would not lower the rents of the properties for which he was responsible on the Earl's estates. ('Boycott' is also used as a verb).

There is also the use of the names of distinguished individuals which are applied, as epithetical labels, to the titles of institutions - which are 'named after' them. The Albert Hall in London and the Carnegie Hall in New York are examples - as are the Nobel Prize in Sweden, the Fields medal (for mathematics) and the T.S.Eliot Prize for Poetry awarded in the UK; Guggenheim Museums in different countries, Gulbenkian Theatres and arts facilities on various campuses; Kennedy and La Guardia airports in New York; Buckingham Palace and Somerset House in London; and countless street names throughout the world, with a myriad further examples. Individual buildings in large Institutions, particularly of research and HE, are often named after distinguished people who have worked there, or are otherwise connected to them: the University of Hull contains the Larkin Building, named after the poet and former University Librarian; the Wilberforce and Venn buildings, named after former citizens of Hull, and the Ferens, Gulbenkian, Allam and Blackburn Buildings, named after benefactors. Such names are too many to be dealt with individually or comprehensively in AWE.

Sometimes the individual's name, which is always written with a lower-case initial letter, is slightly changed, e.g., by the addition of a suffix - as in 'caesarean' and 'malapropism' (see further below). Note that aristocratic titles were traditionally the names of places which provided estates for the holder of the title; so that such names as cardigan and sandwich may also, or alternatively, be listed under Words Derived From Names of Places.

Here, in alphabetical order, are some more examples of words derived from the names of people:*An albert is a type of chain used to attach a pocket watch to a waistcoat or some other article of clothing. It derives its name from Prince Albert (1819-1861), consort of Queen Victoria (1819-1901, reigned 1837-1901).

• The word bloomers (always in the plural) may be used in informal speech as a word for women’s baggy knickers. The word, which used to be used to refer to loose trousers gathered at the knee and worn by women for cycling and similar activities, derives from Mrs Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894), an American social reformer who championed women’s rights and was an influential advocate of the wearing by women of loose trousers rather than dresses. (Note that in the singular bloomer may be one of three words whose meanings are all unrelated to the above and to each other: a bloomer may be either a plant which flowers or (in British English) a silly mistake or (also in British English) a medium-sized crusty loaf of bread, with a glazed top marked by a series of parallel notches.)

• A bougainvillea is a widely cultivated climbing plant, native to tropical climates, with small flowers (usually white) and brightly coloured leaves (usually red or purple). It is named after Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), an admiral in the French navy, who was also an explorer and the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe (1766-1769): the botanist on de Bougainville’s expedition (Philibert Commerçant) was the first European to describe this plant, which he named after the expedition’s leader.

• The transitive verb 'to bowdlerise' (or 'to bowdlerize') - pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, which rhymes with 'cloud', IPA: /ˈbaʊd lə raɪz/ - means: to remove from the text of a play, novel, or other document material that is judged to be obscene, offensive, or in some other way improper, i.e., to expurgate or censor the text. The verb comes from the name of Dr. Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), an English physician and philanthropist, who in 1807 published The Family Shakespeare, an expurgated or bowdlerised version of the text of Shakespeare's plays. The text had been edited by Bowdler's sister, Henrietta Maria (Harriet) Bowdler (1750-1830), with the intention of producing a version of the plays that would not offend the sensibilities of nineteenth-century women. Bowdler later produced a bowdlerised version of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was published posthumously by his nephew, Thomas Bowdler, the Younger. As well as the verb 'to bowdlerise' there is also a noun 'bowdlerisation' (or 'bowdlerization').

• Braille, the system which enables the blind to read and write by representing each letter of the alphabet as a distinctive pattern of raised dots, is named after its French inventor, Louis Braille (1809-1852), who was himself blind from the age of 3 and taught blind children in the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children) in Paris.

• A brougham - pronounced BROO-erm IPA: /ˈbruː əm/ or BROOM IPA: /ˈbruːm/ - is a type of horse-drawn carriage which has four wheels, an enclosed cabin for the passengers, and a raised open seat at the front for the driver. (The word also used to be applied to a large motor car which had an open compartment at the front for the driver.) The word 'brougham' comes from Peter Henry Brougham, first Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), who either invented this type of carriage or, more probably, popularised its use. Brougham was a Scots lawyer who in the course of his long life helped in 1802 to found the Edinburgh Review and, after moving to London, entered Parliament as a Whig in 1810, was involved in the struggle against the slave trade, was one of the founders of University College, London (1828), and became Lord Chancellor (1830-1834).

• A caesarean or caesarean section is an operation in which the surgeon cuts the walls of the mother's abdomen and uterus in order to deliver her baby. The word is commonly said to come from the name of Roman general, politician, and dictator Julius Caesar (101-44 BCE), who was believed to have been born in this way; but it is as likely to be derived directly from the past participle caesus of the Latin verb caedere, 'to cut'. (See further Caesarean.)

• A cardigan is a knitted jacket buttoned at the front. The word comes from the seventh Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), who was an officer in the British cavalry and led the ill-fated charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava (1854).

• Chauvinism is extreme and/or aggressive patriotism, though the word is also used, more generally, of (behaviour resulting from) any strong, unwarranted belief in the superiority of a group to which one belongs (e.g., male chauvinism). Chauvinism is so called after Nicolas Chauvin, a (probably apocryphal) French soldier said to have served under Napoleon Bonaparte and to have been famous for his uncritical and enthusiastic patriotism.

• A chesterfield is either a large sofa, with back and arms of the same height, often upholstered in leather or a man’s overcoat, single- or double-breasted, with a velvet collar. Both the sofa and the overcoat are named after members of the Chesterfield family, the sofa after Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), a statesman and writer, who was the first person to commission a sofa of this type, and the overcoat after George Philip Cecil Arthur Stanhope, Sixth Earl of Chesterfield (1805-1866), a Tory politician and race horse owner, perhaps because his wearing one set a fashion for wearing this type of overcoat.

• A dahlia (IPA: / 'deɪ lɪə/) is a perennial plant with showy flowers and fleshy roots. It is named after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl (1751-1789), who was a student of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).

• A davenport may be either a type of desk or a type of sofa: in Britain a davenport is a tall narrow desk with drawers at the side and a slanting top for use as a writing surface, but in the United States and Canada it is a large sofa, especially one which may be converted into a bed. The use of the word davenport to refer to a type of desk comes from a Captain Davenport, who towards the end of the 18h century was the first person to commission a desk of this type, while the use of the word to refer to a type of sofa comes from A.H. Davenport and Co., a firm, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which made this type of sofa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• De-gaussing, a procedure for demagnetizing ships so that they would not detonate magnetic mines, was named after K. F. Gauss (1777-1855), German mathematician and formulator of two Laws of Magnetism - half of Maxwell's Four Laws - the basis of classical electrodynamics.

• Diesel (or diesel fuel) is a type of liquid fuel obtained from petroleum by distillation and, when used in an internal combustion engine, ignited not by a spark but by compression. It is named after Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913), a German engineer and the inventor of the diesel engine.

• The adjective 'draconian', meaning 'harsh, severe, or very strict' and typically used of laws, penalties, and the like, comes from Draco (in Greek δράκων, Drakon), an Athenian lawgiver who in 621 BCE drew up and imposed on the city of Athens a harsh code of laws which prescribed death for almost every offence. (Draco's legal code remained in force until the second half of the 590s BCE when the statesman Solon (?638-?559 BCE) replaced it with a more humane code which prescribed the death penalty only for murder.) With an initial capital 'Draconian' means 'of or relating to Draco or his legal code'. Be careful not to confuse the adjectives 'draconian' and 'draconic': the latter means 'of or relating to a dragon or dragons', and comes from the Latin draco, a dragon, which in turn is almost a transliteration of the Greek word for a dragon, δράκων, drakon.

• A dunce is a person who is stupid or slow to learn. The word comes from the great medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus (c1265-1308): in the sixteenth century his followers, who were by then often regarded as wedded to outmoded forms of thought, were referred to disparagingly as Dunsmen or Dunses. A dunce cap or dunce's cap was a cone-shaped paper hat which in earlier times was sometimes placed on the head of a child at school if he or she was slow to learn. (Duns Scotus took his name from his birthplace, the town of Duns in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders.)

• A fedora is a type of hat: it is made of soft felt and has an indented crown and a wide brim, often turned down at the front. The hat is named after Princess Fédora Romazov, the heroine of Fédora (1882), a play by the French dramatist Victorien Sardou (1831-1908). On stage the actress (Sarah Bernhardt) who played the part of Princess Fédora wore a hat with an indented crown and a wide brim, and the fedora became, for a time, a very popular type of hat for women. (Cf. trilby below.)

• The adjective gargantuan (pronounced with the stress on the second syllable) means: huge, enormous. The word tends to be used in the context of food (as in ‘He has a gargantuan appetite’ or ‘This is a gargantuan portion’), though it is sometimes found outside this context (as in ‘I have a gargantuan amount of work to finish before the weekend’). The word comes from the fictional character Gargantua, the central figure in The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel, 1534), a set of five satirical novels by François Rabelais (?1494-1553). Gargantua is a gigantic king renowned for his ability to consume great quantities of food and drink.

• A guillotine is an instrument for beheading persons and consists of a heavy blade set between two upright posts. It derives its name from Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), a French doctor and politician, who did not invent the instrument but in 1789 in a speech to the Estates General in Paris argued on humanitarian grounds that it should be used for judicial executions in France. For more see Guillotine.

• A hansom cab is an older name for what is now usually called a 'taxi[cab]'. It was originally a particular design of two-wheeled carriage drawn by one horse, with the driver seated behind the passenger compartment. The hansom could be seen 'plying for hire' like a modern black cab. The vehicle was designed in essence by the architect of Birmingham Town Hall, Joseph Aloysius Hansom, (1803-1882), a native of York.

• A jeremiad is a long, sorrowful complaint or lamentation. The word comes from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah (7th-6th century BCE), who foretold great evils for the inhabitants of Judah if they did not repent of their sins - see the Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Lamentations of Jeremiah. A person who prophesies doom and disaster or denounces the evil ways of his society may be referred to as a Jeremiah.

• A jeroboam is a large wine bottle with a capacity four times that of a normal wine bottle. The word, perhaps most commonly used in connection with champagne, comes from Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel, who reigned towards the end of the tenth century BCE. The choice of name seems to involve a humorous reference to two passages in the Old Testament (I Kings ch. 11, v. 28 and I Kings ch. 14, v. 16) in which Jeroboam is described as a 'mighty man of valour', who 'did sin and who made Israel to sin'. The names for the other, even larger wine bottles also derive from persons mentioned in the Old Testament. A rehoboam, with a capacity six times that of a normal wine bottle, is named after Rehoboam (10th century BCE), one of Solomon's sons and his successor as king of Israel (see 1 Kings ch. 12 & ch. 14, vv. 21-31 and II Chronicles chs. 10-12). A methuselah, eight times the size of a normal wine bottle, takes its name from the patriarch Methuselah, said in Genesis ch. 5, v. 27 to have lived to be 969 years old; a salmanazar, twelve times the size of a normal wine bottle, is named after Shalmaneser, a ninth century king of Assyria (see II Kings chs. 17-18), while a balthazar and a nebuchadnezzar, respectively sixteen and twenty times the size of a normal wine bottle, are both named after rulers of Babylon - Balthazar or Belshazzer (see Daniel chs. 5 & 8), and his father Nebuchadnezzar (634-562, reigned 605-562, see II Kings chs. 24-25 and Daniel). (A wine bottle which has double the capacity of a normal wine bottle is known as a magnum (from the Latin adjective magnus, large).)

• A leotard is a skin-tight or close-fitting garment which covers the torso, leaving the legs and sometimes also the arms uncovered. Worn by acrobats, gymnasts, and ballet dances, it derives its name from Jules Léotard (1838-1870), a French acrobat and trapeze artist (and the inspiration of the 1867 song The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze), who popularised the garment. (Note that in his native language the garment Léotard popularised is not named after him: in French a leotard is a justaucorps.)

• A Luddite is a person who opposes innovation and the use of new technology, especially in an industrial context. The word was first applied to textile workers in Nottingham and adjacent areas who in the second decade of the 19th century rioted and damaged industrial machinery in protest at its introduction, which they believed posed a threat to their livelihoods. Luddites are so called after Ned Ludd, a (probably apocryphal) figure said to have been a Leicestershire workman who in 1779 damaged two stocking frames in a fit of anger at the introduction of machinery into his workplace.

• The transitive verb to lynch - the 'y' is pronounced as a short 'i', IPA: /lɪntʃ/ - is used when an angry crowd takes justice into its own hands and, dispensing with a proper trial, seizes and punishes, usually by hanging, a person thought to be guilty of a crime. The etymology of the word is disputed, but most probably it comes either from Captain William Lynch (1742-1820), who in 1780, with the support of his neighbours in Pittsylvania County in Virginia, set up his own court of justice, or from Charles Lynch (1736-1796), a Justice of the Peace in Virginia, who during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), imprisoned supporters of the British without legal authority. A lynch mob is a crowd which takes justice into its own hands and punishes a person it believes to be guilty of a crime, and the practice of so doing is sometimes referred to as lynch law.

• A mackintosh - also spelt macintosh, and pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, IPA: /ˈmæk ɪ(or ə)n tɒʃ/ - is a raincoat made from a special type of rubberised cloth and named after its inventor, Charles Macintosh (1760-1843). The word 'mackintosh' may also be used to refer to any type of raincoat, whatever its material.

• A malapropism is the unintended misuse of a word by confusing it with another which sounds similar. The word comes from the fictional Mrs Malaprop, a character who misused words in this way in the eighteenth-century comedy The Rivals (1775) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). Sheridan's invention of the name 'Malaprop' drew on the French mal à  propos, 'not to the purpose'. (See further Malapropism.)

• A martinet – pronounced with the stress on the final syllable, IPA: /,mɑː tɪ 'nɛt/ - is a disciplinarian, i.e., a person who demands and enforces strict discipline, especially in a military context. The word comes from Jean Martinet (died 1672) – pronounced IPA: /mar ti 'nɛ/- a lieutenant-colonel and inspector general of the armies of Louis XIV: he devised and established a system for turning raw recruits into a disciplined fighting force. (In contemporary French one of the meanings of martinet is ‘cat-o’-nine-tails’ (i.e., a whip made of rope, with nine knots, used in times past to flog prisoners); but the French word martinet may also mean either ‘swift’ (i.e., a species of fast-flying bird with long slender wings) or ‘tilt hammer'.)

• Masochism, in everyday speech, is the tendency to derive pleasure from the infliction of pain or suffering on oneself – though it is not defined in precisely this way by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. The word – or rather its German equivalent Masochismus – was first used in 1886 by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), who coined it on the basis of the many descriptions of masochism in the novels and short stories of the Austrian aristocrat Leopold von Sacher Masoch (1836-1895).

• A mausoleum is a large, impressive building which houses a tomb or a number of tombs. The word comes, through Greek and Latin, from Mausolus, who ruled Caria (in southwest Turkey) from 377-353 BCE and planned a stately tomb for himself in his capital city, Halicarnassus (the site of the modern city of Bodrum). The tomb, which was made of white marble and was in fact built by Mausolus’ widow, Artemisia, became one of the wonders of the ancient world.

• The verb 'to mesmerize or mesmerise', meaning 'to hypnotize, fascinate, or hold as if spellbound', comes from Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), a German doctor who practised in Vienna and studied animal magnetism. See further Memorize - mesmerize.

• To pasteurise (or pasteurize) a liquid such as milk is to make it safe to drink by heating it and thereby destroying any harmful microorganisms it may contain. The process of pasteurisation (or pasteurization) is named after its inventor, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), a French chemist and bacteriologist, who discovered that the fermentation of milk and alcohol is caused by certain microorganisms they contain.

• A pavlova - pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, IPA: / pæv 'ləʊ və/ – is a dessert consisting of a meringue case filled with whipped cream and fruit (in the UK often strawberries). The dish is named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1885-1931), in whose honour it was created in either Australia or New Zealand – the issue is disputed - during one of her tours of these countries in the 1920s.

• A philippic is an impassioned speech of denunciation or bitter verbal attack. The word 'Philippics', in the plural and with an initial capital, was originally applied to a series of speeches delivered by the Athenian orator Demosthenes (384-322 BCE) in which he attacked Philip II of Macedon (382-336 BCE) and urged his fellow-Athenians to resist the growing power of Macedon. The word was also applied, again with an initial capital, to two speeches of the Roman orator Cicero (106-43 BCE) in which, in imitation of Demosthenes' denunciation of Philip of Macedon, he denounced the ambitions of Mark Antony (82-30 BCE) to secure supreme power for himself after the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. (See further Philip II of Macedon.)

• Pinchbeck is an alloy of copper and zinc: it looks like gold and is used, e.g. in watchmaking, as an imitation gold. The word pinchbeck, as a noun, may also denote anything that is a cheap imitation, while as an adjective it means either ‘made of pinchbeck’ or ‘cheap, sham’. Pinchbeck, the material, is named after its inventor Christopher Pinchbeck (?1670-1732), a London watchmaker.

• A poinsettia (IPA: / pɔɪn 'sɛt ɪə/) is a shrub of the genus Euphorbia: it has distinctive red and green foliage and is indigenous to Mexico, where it is known as Flor de Nochebuena (Christmas Eve Flower). Its English name comes from Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851), an American politician and US Minister to Mexico (1825-1830), who introduced the plant into the United States.

• A quisling is a person who assists an occupying enemy force, i.e., a collaborator or traitor. The word comes from Major Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), a Norwegian who collaborated with the Nazis and ruled Norway during the Second World War on behalf of the German forces which had occupied his country.

• A raglan is a type of coat without shoulder seams. The name comes from the title of the 1st Baron Raglan (1788-1855), whose right arm had been amputated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. As an adjective, raglan is applied to the type of sleeve that reaches to the collar, leaving diagonal seams from neck to armpit.

• Sadism - the adjective is sadistic - is the infliction of pain or suffering on another person (or other persons) for the sake of one’s own pleasure or sexual gratification. The practice is so called after Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, and writer, notorious both for his own sadistic sexual practices and for the many descriptions of sexual violence contained in his works.

• Salmonella - pronounced with the stress on the penultimate syllable, 'sal-mon-ELL-a', IPA: /sæl mɒ (or ɛ)n ˈɛl ə/ - is the name of a genus of bacteria. Members of the genus include Salmonella typhosa, the cause of typhoid fever, and many other species which cause food poisoning. The name comes from Daniel Elmer Salmon (1850-1914), an American veterinary pathologist who worked in the Veterinary Division of the United States Department of Agriculture and was head of the laboratory in which this type of bacterium was first discovered in 1885 by his research assistant Theobald Smith (1859-1934).

• A sandwich is a slice of meat, cheese, or other filling, placed between two slices of bread. The word comes from the name of the eighteenth-century nobleman, John Montague, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), whose reluctance to leave the gaming table for a more conventional meal is said to have led to his invention of the sandwich - although OED gives his snack as "some slices of cold beef placed between slices of toast", during 24 hours of gambling.

• A saxophone – often abbreviated to sax - is a musical instrument: it is a member of the wind family, usually made of brass, with keys, and a single-reed mouthpiece. It is named after its inventor, Adolphe Sax (1814-1894), a Belgian musical-instrument maker.

• The noun shrapnel refers collectively to the small fragments of metal which may be contained in a shell or bomb and are thrown out when it explodes. The word, which was originally used to refer to both the shell or bomb itself and its contents of metal fragments, comes from the inventor of the prototype, Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842), who in 1784 as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery designed a hollow cannon ball which was filled with lead shot and exploded in mid-air.

• Sideburns are the thick whiskers a man may grow either side of his face in front of the ears: they are usually linked by a moustache while the chin is clean-shaven. The word sideburns was formed by transposing the two syllables of burnsides, a word first used in reference to the distinctive facial hair of Ambrose Everett Burnside (1824-1881), a soldier, industrialist, and politician, who was a general with the Union Army in the American Civil War.

• A silhouette – the word is pronounced with the ‘h’ silent and the stress on the final syllable, IPA: /,sɪ luː 'ɛt/ - is the dark shape of a person, animal, or object viewed against a lighter background. The word is applied, more particularly, to the portrait of an individual in profile cut out of black paper and mounted on a pale (usually white) background. The word comes from the name of a French politician and government minister, Ètienne de Silhouette (1709-1767). In 1759, during the Seven Years War (1756-1763), de Silhouette was obliged by a financial crisis to raise levels of taxation, particularly on the wealthy, who were in consequence forced to find less expensive substitutes for certain items of expenditure. These cheaper substitutes were referred to, no doubt ironically, as silhouettes, and so the word came to be applied to profile portraits cut out of black paper, which were popular at the time and seen as less expensive substitutes for painted portraits. However, the word ‘silhouette’ did not become established in English until the early decades of the nineteenth century: before that a silhouette was known as a profile or a shade.

• The Sten or Sten gun is a type of submachine gun designed in 1940 and widely used by British and Commonwealth forces in World War II. The word 'Sten' is an acronym formed from the initial letters of the names of the gun's designers, (Reginald V.) Shepherd and (Harold) Turpin, and the place name Enfield (now one of the outer boroughs of Greater London), where the gun was assembled.

• The word 'thespian' is used as an adjective to mean 'relating to drama or the theatre', and as a noun is used, usually jocularly, to mean 'actor or actress'. The word comes from the Greek poet Thespis (6th century BCE), who is regarded as the founder of tragic drama and won a prize for tragedy at Athens in 534 BCE. (He was also the first person to appear in a Greek tragedy as an actor separate from the chorus, delivering a prologue and a number of set speeches. See further Greek tragedy and protagonist.) With an initial capital, the adjective 'Thespian' means 'of or relating to Thespis'.

• A trilby is a type of hat: it has a low, indented crown and narrow brim, and is usually made of felt. Its name derives from Trilby O’Farrell, the heroine of Trilby (1894), a novel by George du Maurier (1834-1896). In the stage version of the novel the actress who played Trilby wore a hat with an indented crown and narrow brim, and the popularity of the novel and its stage adaptation led to this becoming a widely-worn type of headgear for men. (Cf. fedora above.)

• Venn diagrams, diagrammatical -representations of mathematical, or logical, sets in the form of overlapping circles, are called after their inventor, John Venn (1834-1923), who was born in Hull. He became, like his father Henry Venn (1796-1873), grandfather John Venn (1759-1813) and great-grandfather Henry Venn, (1725-1797), a clergyman, all evangelicals: the grandfather was a founding member of the Claphamites and a friend and collaborator of Wilberforce's in the Abolition [of Slavery] movement. The Venn Building, seat of the administration of the University of Hull, is named after John Venn.

• A Very light is a coloured flare used for signalling at night, especially at sea, so called after their inventor, Lieutenant Edward Wilson Very (1852-1910), who was an ordinance officer in the United States navy. See also Very (proper noun).

• A victoria may be either a small, horse-drawn carriage, with four wheels, a folding hood, seats for two passengers, and a seat at the front for the driver or a variety of plum - also referred to as a victoria plum - sweet in taste and red and yellow in colour. Both the carriage and the plum take their name from Queen Victoria (1819-1901, reigned 1837-1901).

• Wellingtons (more formally Wellington boots; less formally wellies; outside the UK sometimes called 'rubber boots', 'gumboots' and 'topboots') are nowadays waterproof boots, made of rubber or a synthetic equivalent, reaching just below the knee. Originally they were a development of the Hessian boot, made in leather, and cut to give some protection to cavalrymen by having a higher protrusion above the front of the knee. They were designed to a specification by the first Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), the victorious general at the Battle of Waterloo, and later Prime Minister. In the nineteenth century, his name was also applied to other things - Wellington apples. chests of drawers, coats, hats and trousers - but is now only seen in the tree wellingtonia, the everyday British name for the giant sequoia or redwood, Sequoiadendron giganteum, and beef Wellington, a dish of beef wrapped in pastry which may not be named directly after the Duke, but after the city of Wellington in New Zealand - which was named after him.

Many scientific terms come from the names of great scientists - in particular, the names of many scientific units of measurement, such as the volt, the SI unit of electric potential (from the Italian physicist Count Alessandro Volta (1745-1827)); the ampere, a unit of electric current (from A. M. Ampère, French physicist (1775-1836)); the coulomb, a unit of electrical quantity (from the French physicist, C. A. de Coulomb (1736-1806)) - see also Columba - Columbia - Colombo - Columbus); the watt, a unit of power (from the pioneer of steam engineering, James Watt (1736-1819)) - see also What - wat - watt - wot; the newton, a unit of force (from the name of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)); the ohm, the SI unit of electrical resistance (from the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1787-1854)); the kelvin, the SI unit of thermodynamic temperature (from the Scottish mathematician and physicist William Thomson (Lord) Kelvin (1824-1907)); the becquerel, the SI unit of radioactivity (from the French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852-1908)) - which supplanted the curie, named in honour of Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish-born French physicist); and the joule, the SI unit of work or energy (from the English physicist James Prescott Joule (1818-1889)).

The names of a number of the chemical elements, more particularly those which do not occur naturally but have been synthesised in the laboratory, also derive from the names of persons, e.g., einsteinium (symbol: Es; atomic number: 99) from the physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), rutherfordium (symbol: Rf; atomic number: 104) from the British chemist and physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937); and copernicium (symbol: Cn; atomic number: 112) from the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). (For more examples see Chemical elements - Etymologies.)

See also Cyrillic alphabet, Dunce, and Fuchsia.