So the guy was wearing a cardigan even though it was 30 degrees Celsius (not Fahrenheit) when he spilled his Caesar salad all over his poinsettia and decided to boycott the entire sandwich industry in America. Also he found shrapnel on his graham cracker and was such a chauvinist with sideburns that all he wanted to do was sit in a jumbo Jacuzzi, smoke some nicotine and play the saxophone.
Now, if those sentences made any sentient sense to you, I’m a bit worried about you. Maybe I should explain. Those sentences, which, albeit make about as much sense as a chocolate teapot, are made up of special words. These special words are called “eponyms”. And if you are up to snuff in your “nyms” these days – you know, antonyms, acronyms, homonyms, synonyms etc. (and who isn’t?) I’m sure you already know that an eponym is, according to my extensive research by typing it into the interweb, a “person, place, or thing after which something is named”.
As an example, the one word in those weird sentences above that is an eponymic give-away would be “sandwich”. Most people know that something eatable between two slices of bread was invented by John Montague (1718-1792), right? You know, the 4th Earl of Sandwich in England. And lots of people know that our temperature scales were invented by clever scientific dudes, specifically, Anders Celsius (Swedish) and Daniel Fahrenheit (German).
I found other perhaps lesser-known (at least to me) eponyms extremely fascinating, but then, I’m a self-confessed word nerd. Cardigan – a sweater that opens in the front comes from the leader of the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854, James Thomas Brudenell who had his soldiers wear that type of uniform. He was the 7th Earl of Cardigan. Boycott? That would be Charles C. Boycott who was boycotted by his tenants in Ireland when he refused to reduce the high cost of rent. America? Remember high school History? Famous explorer in the 1400s, Mr. Amerigo Vespucci.
Ceasar salad? No, not THAT Ceasar. It was invented by Italian chef Caesar Cardini in the ‘50s. That beautiful red Poinsettia plant? Introduced from Mexico to the US by botanist Joel Roberts Poinsett. Also in the 1800s a British artillery officer invented a shell filled with metal projectiles intended to kill troops. His name was Henry. Henry Shrapnel.
Graham cracker: invented by New Jersey minister, Sylvester Graham, preaching that healthy eating prevented sexual urges. (I bet it didn’t sell well.) Chauvinist: Based on one Nicolas Chauvin a soldier with exaggerated patriotism devoted to Napoleon. Sideburns: named after mutton-chopped Ambrose Burnside, an American Civil War general. Jumbo: from the famous giant circus elephant “Jumbo” in the 1800s; and inventor Candido Jacuzzi created a pump for a bathtub when his young son was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
As for sucking on a cigarette and blowing on a woodwind, that would be Jean Nicot, French ambassador who introduced tobacco to France in the 1500s, claiming it had healing properties, and Adolphe Sax who invented the saxophone in Belgian in 1840.
I hope you’re getting a kick out of eponyms, I know I am. I’ll leave you with one more ‘epic’ sentence for you to consider:
When you are wearing a Jules Leotard on a George Ferris Jr. wheel that is powered by a Rudolf Diesel engine with high Alessandro Volta’s and James Watt’s at the England racing Earl of Derby, don’t be a Giacomo Casanova and take your date to the Cesar Ritz or someone might call a Sir Robert Peel or the Paparazzo will show up and photograph your Etiene de Silhouette.
And if it all goes wrong, don’t worry; it’s just Captain Edward Murphy’s Law.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer author and filmmaker. Reach out to Harley with any thoughts or ideas at harleyhay99@gmail.com.
