Three Perfect Eponymous Words

Eponymous products and places are all around us. These days, those participating in the high jump invariably sail over the bar via the Fosbury flop, a jumping style named after the recently departed James Fosbury. Here in the UK, we don't vacuum the floor, but rather we hoover it, and in so doing turn the eponymous proper noun into a verb. And there are many more examples.

When we boycott, say, a particular company, we are referencing Ireland in the 1880s. In response to proposed evictions, a plan of isolation was perpetrated against land agent, Captain Charles C. Boycott. Locals who were expected to bring in the harvest withdrew their labour, and Boycott was refused service in some shops. But eponyms don't only relate to people.

The balaclava helmet was named after the battle of Balaclava, a town near Sevastopol. During the Crimean War, in 1854, freezing British soldiers were grateful to receive parcels from home containing knitted woolen helmets that left only the face exposed. In modern times, the balaclava is more associated with bank robbers and terrorists.

Some eponymous words though are so fitting, it would be difficult to come up with one that would be an improvement. Here are three such which, in the eyes of this reporter, can't be bettered. By way of demonstration of this supposition, I have added alternative suggestions of what might have been for each word.

Shrapnel

Back in the 1780s, Henry Shrapnel created a new form of anti-personnel missile. He figured that packing the shell casing with lead shot would cause more damage than the explosion alone. His idea was taken up by the British military, and the name is still used today.

The word can also refer to pieces of shell casing that have been twisted into sharp-edged projectiles that would rip through flesh and bone. If the inventor of this type of shell had remained anonymous, and the authorities had to come up with a word to describe these lethal shards of twisted metal, I would defy them to come up with a more fitting name than shrapnel. It sounds so right.

But what if someone else had invented it?

News from the front that a relative was coming home after being hospitalized with Shufflebottom wounds might not heap hero status on the unfortunate soldier.

Borstal

Not a person, but a place. The word Borstal uttered by a judge struck terror into the hearts of countless young delinquents, from cosh-wielding teddy boys to gas meter cracksmen.

Borstals were devised to create a separate system for young offenders; one that would keep them from the company and influence of adult prisoners. In 1902, the new system was tried out at Borstal Prison, near Rochester in Kent, and as the scheme expanded, the name remained. The Borstal regime was supposed to offer education and training to set young offenders on the straight and narrow, but a three-year stretch at one of HMP's Borstal camps could be brutal and austere.

The name Borstal has a ring of dread about it; it almost sounds punitive. This was fortunate for those who set up the scheme because Britain is blessed with a multitude of towns and villages that have less harsh-sounding, even downright silly names.

But what if it had originated in another village?

Being sentenced to three years Boggy Bottom might not have struck the same level of dread into the recipient as the word 'Borstal'.

Biro

It is a well-known fact among marketing people that a short, snappy brand name will stick in the mind of potential customers more readily than a longer name. There is a long list of household brands, past and present, that were thus named, including Oxo, Acdo, Vim, Omo, Ajax, Dove, Daz, Doby, Beaky, Mick, and Titch.*

Into this mix came a Hungarian with an invention that would change the world of handwriting forever. In 1945, Lazslo Biro brought his revolutionary ballpoint pen into a world of blots, spatters, and smudges. There was no need to employ a marketing team to come up with a snappy name for the new invention - the surname of the inventor would suffice. In fact, John Peel's appraisal of the single Teenage Kicks by the Undertones, that "there's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it" could well apply to the biro.

But what if someone else had invented it?

Say one Otto Kugelschreiber from Dortmund had devised this new writing gadget. That would be ideal because kugelscreiber is a German word for ballpoint pen.

*I added those last three for comic effect.