Word! The Language Column
The Top 5 Words surprisingly Named after People

Elias Hirschl likes to play with the listicle format. They are often about everything and nothing - or about words that have a person behind them. We find out what boycott has to do with an Irish earl. And Bluetooth with an Austrian film diva.

By Elias Hirschl

My latest novel, Content, is very much about the listicle genre. These are – sometimes pointless – online articles in list form that are more about clickbait than content. And since I’ve been collecting lists for fun for years, I thought I’d try my hand at a listicle. So today you’ll find a small selection of things and concepts named after people – which you wouldn’t have thought of at first.

1. Schrebergarten (allotment garden)

Ah, allotments: we think of the petty bourgeois from the city who longs for a bit of nature, but not too much of it. A bit of relaxation from boring office work in a boring allotment. Few people know that the Schrebergarten (allotment garden) in German was named after Moritz Schreber. He was a doctor and teacher who lived from 1808 to 1861 and saw the biggest problem with young men’s health as being that they masturbated too much. To combat this, he recommended enemas with ice water, for example. He also designed several mechanical devices that used straps and metal frames to force children into a “healthy” posture, and thought corporal punishment was appropriate even for infants. Phew.

2. Guillotine

In 1789, the French doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the use of a guillotine to carry out the death penalty. This was seen as an improvement on the execution system in France, where those sentenced to death had previously been beheaded with a sword, sometimes with more success, sometimes with less. However, Guillotin did not actually invent the instrument that bears his name, nor did he witness a single beheading. It is said that he suffered greatly from the misuse of his surname – and he was not alone: his children and grandchildren later had their surnames changed. However, the device worked so effectively for centuries that in 1996 the US state of Georgia attempted to replace the electric chair with the guillotine.

3. Boycott

Few people have had such an impact on the history of language that their name has become a common verb. The terms boycott and boycotting can be traced back to Charles Cunningham Boycott, who is said to have been one of the most unpleasant land administrators in history. He administered the Irish county of Mayo on the island of Achill on behalf of the Earl of Erne. He was apparently so inhumane in his treatment of the local tenants that all the farmers refused to pay him or co-operate with him. In the end, he had to leave Ireland – and the word “boycott” went down in history. Fun fact: In German-speaking countries, the term Verhansung was once used when the merchants' association known as the Hanseatic League decided it would no longer work with rebellious towns or businesses. 

4. Schwarzschild Radius

This is the radius of the event horizon of a black hole. It defines a kind of boundary in the gravitational field. You could say that it is the radius of a black hole’s shield. That would be reason enough to call it the Schwarzschild radius (Schwarzschild means “black shield” in German). But there is also the fact that the inventor of this phenomenon happened to be named Karl Schwarzschild.

5. Bluetooth

I cheated a little on this one, because the word is not named after the inventor. But it would be a complete waste of time if I didn’t tell you that Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr not only became a Hollywood star in the 1930s and 1940s, but also developed a radio control system for torpedoes that laid the foundations for Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth, in turn, was named after the Danish King Harald Bluetooth, which, to be honest, doesn’t really matter. The saddest part of the whole thing is that instead of an exciting invention, all we have today is a ruined building on Vienna’s Mariahilfer street named after Hedy Lamarr.

Megalomaniac men

If there’s one thing you notice when researching these eponyms – things and concepts named after people – it’s the fact that almost all of them are named after men. That every random English earl at some point wanted to name a tea, roast or sandwich – or even the whole concept of a sandwich – after himself. This absolute megalomania of sticking meat between two slices of bread and thinking: surely no one has ever thought of this before, I have to name it after myself! To cure this historical hangover, I’d rather have a Bloody Mary first, named after either Mary Brown Warburton or Queen Mary Tudor.