I was teaching my students about eponyms today. They are pretty nifty things. An eponym is a word that enters the language because of a particular person either real or fictitious. For example a scrooge is a person who doesn't like sharing his or her money but the word entered the language as the name of Charles Dickens's character, Ebenezer Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol who was a greedy money lender.
Once you start looking for them, they are all over the place in English. Our language must really be a nightmare to learn. Here are some of my favorites:
Adam's apple
Shrapnel (named for a British artillery Sargent: Henry Shrapnel)
Panic (related to Pan the goat legged god)
Narcissism
Aphrodisiac
Watt
Volt
Teddy Bear
Silhouette
Serendipity (comes from an old version of the name for Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia has a massive list of them, but it isn't hard to spot them. I just think it's nifty
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