What's in a Name?: You Name It: Eponyms

Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa was a 9th century mathematician known as "al-Kwarizmi", "the man from Kwarizm". Al-Kwarizmi became algorismus in post-classical Latin, and then algorithm in the late 17th century.

In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan, a giant who supported the heavens on his shoulders. His image appeared on early books of maps, which became known as Atlases.

When Captain Charles Boycott tried to evict tenants from his noble Irish employer's land in 1880, those tenants and other townspeople shunned him, refusing to speak to him or help harvest.

James Thomas Brundenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, wore a knit woolen jacket while leading the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War in 1854. Cardigan is the English spelling of the Welsh Ceredigion, meaning "Ceredig's Land".

Czar comes from the Russian Tsar, the title given to the Emperor of Russia. It in turn derives from the Latin Caesar, "emperor", which is the same root as the German Kaiser.

A hangman who worked at Tyburn gallows in the early 1600s had the surname Derrick. Over time the name came to refer to a crane-like structure, and eventually to the apparatus used to drill for oil.

During the French Revolution in 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin recommended the use of this medieval device for the humane and efficient implementation of capital punishment.

Authorship of the Old Testament's Book of Lamentations was originally credited to the Prophet Jeremiah.

This one-piece garment that allows maximum movement was named after French trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1830-1870), who performed wearing them.

In the Odyssey, Mentor was a friend of Odysseus and custodian of his son Telemachus. The goddess Athena often assumed Mentor's form to give guidance to Telemachus while his father was away.

Pan was the Greek god of woods and fields, and the source for noises that would spook herds of animals or crowds of people. Panikon, meaning "of Pan", referred to these terrified stampedes.

In Federico Fellini's classic 1959 film La Dolce Vita, Paparazzo is the name of a pushy photographer who works with the main character, played by Marcello Mastroianni. The name Paparazzo has no particular meaning in Italian; it owes its subsequent association with pesky celebrity-chasers to this film.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), a French chemist, invented the process of heating milk and other products to kill most of the bacteria in them, making them safer and giving them longer shelf lives.

Ebenezer Scrooge, is the cruel, selfish, and miserly main character in Charles Dickens' 1843 story A Christmas Carol. Though Scrooge is redeemed at the end, his name continues to refer to someone cheap and grouchy, specifically a person with no Christmas spirit.

Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767) was the French Minister of Finance in 1759 and reportedly decorated his chateau with drawn or cut paper portraits of people in profile.

Frenchman Louis Braille went blind as a child and developed his system of writing for the blind in 1824.

It is doubtful that Nicolas Chauvin really existed, but the term that bears "his" name lives on. Chauvin, it is said, was a badly wounded, poorly compensated soldier who was nonetheless still loyal to Napoleon, even after the leader himself abdicated. Chauvinism has come to be used as shorthand for "male chauvinism" but in its original use it meant "fanatical patriotism," and by extension, fanatical devotion to any cause even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

The development of the Diesel engine, an important engineering feat, was the work of Rudolph Diesel in the late 19th century.

A mausoleum is named after Mausolus, a ruler of part of the Greek Empire in the 4th century B.C.E. His burial chamber, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Pyrrhus of Epirus (319-272 B.C.E.) was a Greek king and a staunch opponent of Roman rule, willing to sustain heavy losses for a victory.

Serendipity was coined by the English writer Horace Walpole in 1754. He got the idea from a Persian fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes always had great adventures and good luck and Serendip (which used to be Sri Lanka's name) came from the Sanskrit word Simhaladvipa meaning "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island."