Harvey Wallbangers and Tam O'Shanters. Martin Hannan
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Medical Eponyms, for instance, would have thousands of entries alone.
My collection will feature only the better known of the scientific eponyms, but the list will still be long and wide-ranging, with the main criterion – though not rigidly so – being that the eponym is already in a dictionary or encyclopaedia, dozens of which I have consulted.
In some cases, I will also show that the common presumption that a word is an eponym is simply at odds with the facts.
This book will no doubt be accused of being idiosyncratic and quirky – well, so was Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. For instance, just like the good doctor, my definitions will be as long or as short as I want to make them, depending on the quality of the story behind the word.
I will also include my own eponym: Hannan’s Law – the assertion that a statement has less credibility the more exaggeratedly someone states it. For instance, if someone says something is ‘definite fact’, you must automatically presume the ‘fact’ needs double-checking. Or if a politician says ‘it is true to say …’ then you can bet your wages on the rest of the sentence being a lie. Murphy’s Law – there will be a section on these eponymous laws – unfortunately suggests that somebody else will have already coined an eponym for my Hannanist creed, but my name will go on it … and, according to Stigler’s Law, someone else will supplant my name.
Harvey Wallbanger and Tam O’Shanters – A Book of Eponyms hopes to be a work that can be read for pleasure and yet will stand as a reference book for writers and all who want to enrich their language and knowledge.
It is because this book is aimed at writers and people who love using the English language that I have decided to group eponyms under headings which indicate how the word can be used, inspired by the eponymous thesaurus of Monsieur Roget. There is a full alphabetical listing at the back of the book, however.
Above all, I want to tell stories about words, and hopefully with sufficient humour to retain your interest. I view this as a work in progress and, with a website starting the week the book is published – www.martinhannan.com – I hope readers will take the chance to correct any mistakes I have made or add more eponyms and explanations.
Consequently, Harvey Wallbangers and Tam O’Shanters – A Book of Eponyms will not be stentorian in tone, but will be as light as a zephyr. It will not plough the Stygian depths of the language for every example of an eponym, and the tone will be more Dickensian than Dylanesque or Joycean. Nevertheless, the author’s approach to this herculean task will be Stakhanovite with a touch of Taylorist efficiency thrown in.
See what I mean about eponyms? They’re everywhere.
HEROES AND VILLAINS – DEFINING QUALITIES
These eponyms are qualitative adjectives which describe attributes or features supposedly resembling those of the person, or that person’s creations, whose name thus became eponymous.
ALEXANDRINE
When the word Alexandrine is used in a historical context, it refers to the era and perhaps the conquered territories of King Alexander the Great of Macedon (356–323BC). In grammar, however, ‘alexandrine’ has a specific use, referring to a form of verse that first emerged in France in the early Middle Ages. It is basically a line of 12 syllables with the stress on both the sixth and last syllables, and was the major verse form before William Shakespeare and others popularised the iambic pentameter.
Most scholars think Alexandrine derives from the 12th-century French chivalric romances about King Alexander the Great who famously conquered most of the known world before dying at the age of 32. These long works, some of which are attributed to the poet Alexander of Paris or Bernay, are rendered in the verse form that was later named ‘alexandrine’ in acknowledgement of their influence.
ARTHURIAN
Most eponyms take their root from a real person or someone in fiction, but very few derive from a person who may have been a myth, but was certainly a legend. Did King Arthur live? Do we care? He is such a hero that we want him to have lived.
When we use the word Arthurian, it is almost always in conjunction with the word legend and, as such, King Arthur might well have been a real person around whom much imaginative folklore has been weaved.
That a ‘King of the Britons’ of this name – and we cannot even be sure that Arthur was his name – existed on the west coast of Great Britain sometime between the 4th and 7th centuries is generally accepted by most people, except a lot of pesky historians and archaeologists who insist there is no evidence for Arthur.
How dare they! The fact is we want to believe in Camelot, its king and his sword Excalibur, his wizard Merlin and his queen Guinevere, and the knights of the Round Table. In Britain, we need an explanation why the Dark Ages of conquest and battle fell upon the whole island, and we need to believe there was a Camelot which represented a last stand of goodness against the incoming barbarism – or else why should we believe that Britain is ever going to return to that idyllic state?
The fact is that the Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth probably invented most of the history of Arthur in his book Historia Regum Britannia in the 12th century. Even back then, his critics accused Geoffrey of making up most of the Arthurian tales, though they waited until after he died around 1155AD, as it was not the done thing to criticise a bishop of the Church. Invention or not, Geoffrey did us all a favour, not least because he added stories of Leir and Cymbeline which provided William Shakespeare with inspiration for his plays.
The Arthur stories grew apace after Geoffrey, with Lancelot and the Holy Grail being added by the French writer Chretien de Troyes, and then in came the Arthurian daddy of them all, Sir Thomas Malory, who penned Le Morte d’Arthur in the 15th century. It all adds to the legend that we are not even sure who Malory was, but he gathered all the English and French stories into one volume which still stands as the key work of Arthurian literature. Since then there have been many more Arthurian stories, and film and television works abound, which is largely why we all understand what the eponym ‘Arthurian’ stands for – anything to do with Camelot and its King.
AUGUSTAN
Though he was born Gaius Octavius Thurinus, the first true Emperor of Rome is better known to posterity as Augustus (63BC–14AD). What is perhaps not always realised about a man who really did change the world is that he had different names at different times during his lifetime.
Known as Octavius as a boy, he took the name Gaius Julius Caesar in honour of the great-uncle who had adopted him – history (and Shakespeare) refer to him at that time as Octavian or Octavianus. Only after he became Emperor was he awarded the name Augustus – ‘Revered One’ – by the Senate and, confusingly, he was also known as Caesar and referred to in Greek as Sebastos.
He finished as Augustus, however, having avenged the murder of his great-uncle Julius by beating Brutus and Cassius in battle, seeing off his former co-leaders Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, and reigning over Rome for 40 years in an era of relative peace and prosperity that was known as the Pax Romana. His many other reforms of the State and general control of the Republic boosted Rome’s fortunes and saw him awarded divine status after his death. The Roman Empire he effectively founded lasted for centuries, but was never perhaps so glorious than in the original Augustan age.
Though the word is not as common as before, we still use ‘Augustan’ to refer to the best of something, the height of quality or the inspirational foundation, as in the Augustan age of English literature in the early 18th century.
BACCHANALIAN
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