Dictionary of Eponyms

This book explores an aspect of the rich heritage of the English language – the deriving of words from the names of people, eg sandwich, wellington, mackintosh, ampere, watt, volt.

Eponyms are the people who give their names to words. Most eponymous words derive from a person’s surname: boycott, from the Irish landlord Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, dahlia, from the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, the sousaphone, from the American bandmaster John Philip Sousa, and volt, from the Italian ...