List of eponyms (A–K)

An eponym is a person (real or fictitious) from whom something is said to take its name. The word is back-formed from "eponymous", which in turn is from the Greek word "eponymos" meaning "giving name".

Here is a list of eponyms:

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - Z

A

• Achilles, Greek mythological character – Achilles' tendon; Achilles' heel
• Adam, Biblical character – Adam's apple
• Alvin Adams (1804–1877) – Adams Express
• Len Adleman – the third letter of the name RSA, an asymmetric algorithm for public key cryptography, is taken from Adleman
• Al-Khwarizmi, Persian mathematician of the 9th century – algorithm, algorism
• Alfred V. Aho – the first letter of the name awk, a computer pattern/action language, is taken from Aho
• Matthew Algie – tea and coffee merchant company
• Alice Liddell – Alice in Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland syndrome
• Alois Alzheimer – Alzheimer's disease
• Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss – A&M Records
• André-Marie Ampère – ampere - unit of electric current, Ampère's law
• Roald Amundsen – Amundsen Sea; Amundsen crater, a crater on the Moon; Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
• José de Anchieta - Anchieta Island, Anchieta Highway, in Brazil
• Anders Jonas Ångström – angstrom, unit of distance
• Rafael Moreno Aranzadi, nicknamed Pichichi - The Pichichi Trophy
• Archimedes – Archimedes' screw, Archimedes' principle
• William George Armstrong – Armstrong breech-loading gun
• Benedict Arnold– traitor
• Hans Asperger – Asperger's syndrome
• Robert Atkins (nutritionist) – Atkins Diet
• Atlas, a mythical King – atlas
• Aurélio Buarque de Holanda – Aurélio's Brazilian Portuguese Dictionary.
• Caesar Augustus – month August; Zaragoza (a spanish city)
• R. Stanton Avery – Avery Dennison Corporation
• Amedeo Avogadro – Avogadro's number, Avogadro's Law

B

• Isaac Babbitt – Babbitt metal.
• Joseph Jules François Félix Babinski, French neurologist – Babinski reflex or Babinski sign, common name for Plantar reflex
• Karl Baedeker – Baedeker's
• Balthazar traditional name for one of the Three Wise Men – 12 litre wine bottle (see Wine bottle nomenclature)
• Barbara, daughter of Ruth Handler, creator of Barbie – Barbie doll
• Joseph Barbera and William Hanna – Hanna-Barbera Productions
• Y. M. Barr – Epstein-Barr virus
• Jean Alexandre Barré – Guillain-Barré syndrome
• Caspar Bartholin the Younger – Bartholin's gland
• Basarab I – Bessarabia
• Karl Adolph von Basedow – Graves-Basedow disease
• Tomas Bata – founder of Bata Shoes; Bata Shoe Museum, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Batawa, Ontario; Batanagar, India
• Francis Beaufort – Beaufort scale.
• Heinrich Beck – Beck's beer, Beck's Futures art prize
• Louis de Béchamel, a courtier to King Louis XIV – Béchamel sauce
• Henri Becquerel – becquerel, unit of radioactivity
• Hulusi Behçet, Turkish dermatologist – Behçet's disease
• Adrian Bejan – Bejan number
• Alexander Graham Bell – bel - unit of relative power level; Bell Labs, BellSouth, Bellcore, Regional Bell operating company - companies. Also gave birth to a slang term i.e. give James a bell, call James on the telephone.
• Carl Benz – Benz & Cie. (later Daimler-Benz)
• Hiram Berdan – Berdan Sharps Rifle
• David Berkowitz also known as "Son of Sam" – Son of Sam law
• Juan de Bermudez – Bermuda
• Daniel Bernoulli – Bernoulli's principle
• Sergei Natanovich Bernstein, Bernstein polynomial
• Yogi Berra, baseball player – Yogi Bear, a bear in animated cartoons
• Henry Bessemer – Bessemer converter
• Pierre Bézier, French engineer and creator of the Bézier curve
• Bieda, a Saxon landowner ("Bieda's ford" + shire) – Bedfordshire
• Laszlo Biro – Biro, (ballpoint pen)
• Otto von Bismarck, first German Chancellor – Bismarck Archipelago and Bismarck Sea near New Guinea; German battleship Bismarck as well as two ships of the Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine); Bismarck, North Dakota
• Fisher Black and Myron Scholes – Black-Scholes model of options pricing
• Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894) – bloomers
• Boann the Irish Goddess – The river Boyne
• Johann Elert Bode and Johann Daniel Titius – Titius-Bode Law
• Niels Bohr – Bohr magneton, Bohr radius, Bohrium, chemical element
• Lecoq de Boisbaudran – Gallium, chemical element. Although named after Gallia (Latin for France), Lecoq de Boisbaudran, the dicoverer of the metal, subtly attached an association with his name. Lecoq (rooster) in Latin is gallus.
• Simón Bolívar – Bolivia, Bolîvar department, Colombia, varous cities and tows named Bolívar en Venezuela and Colombia
• Ludwig Boltzmann – Boltzmann constant, Stefan-Boltzmann constant, Stefan-Boltzmann law
• James Bond, the ornithologist – James Bond, the fictional spy character
• Satyendra Nath Bose – bosons, Bose-Einstein statistics, Bose-Einstein condensates
• Professor Amar Bose – Bose Speakers
• Louis Antoine de Bougainville – French navigator who found the bougainvillea plant
• Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-1897) – boycott
• Robert Boyle – Boyle's Law
• Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), published an edition of Shakespeare without words or expressions unsuitable to family reading, hence bowdlerize
• Jim Bowie – Bowie knife
• Bowman's Capsule, named for Sir William Bowman, a British anatomist
• Brahmagupta – Brahmagupta's formula, Brahmagupta's identity, Brahmagupta's trapezium, Brahmagupta's problem, Brahmagupta's polynomial
• Louis Braille (1809-1852) – the braille writing system for the blind
• Robert Brown – Brownian motion
• John Browning – Browning firearms, including the Browning Automatic Rifle
• Prince Brychan – Brecknockshire
• Bucca, a Saxon landowner ("Bucca's home" + shire) – Buckinghamshire
• Professor Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-1899) – Bunsen burner
• General Ambrose Burnside – sideburns

C

• John Cadbury – opened his shop in 1824 which became the company Cadbury
• Julius Caesar – month July, Caesarean section, Caesar cipher, titles Kaiser and Tsar
• John Calvin, 16th century theologian – the religious doctrine of Calvinism, Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip
• Caesar Cardini, restaurateur – Caesar salad
• Sam Carr, neighbour of David Berkowitz also known as "Son of Sam" – Son of Sam law
• Hendrik Casimir – Casimir effect
• Anders Celsius – Celsius (unit of temperature) Celsius (Moon crater)
• Ceredig, son of Cunedda – Cardigan
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – Chandrasekhar limit, Chandra X-ray Observatory
• Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist – Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, Maladie de Charcot, French name for Motor Neurone Disease
• King Charles I of England – North Carolina and South Carolina
• Jacques Charles and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac – Law of Charles and Gay-Lussac (frequently called simply Charles' Law)
• Bobby Charlton – the "Bobby Charlton" comb over hairstyle
• Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov – Cherenkov effect
• Jesus Christ, "The Saviour" – El Salvador, Christianity, Christmas
• Saint Christopher – Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Walter Chrysler – founder of Chrysler, DaimlerChrysler
• Alfred Chuang – the third letter of the company name BEA Systems, is taken from Alfred, a co-founder
• Alonzo Church – Church-Turing thesis, Church-Turing-Deutsch principle
• Cincinnatus, Roman statesman – Cincinnati, Ohio (indirectly)
• Senator Claghorn, regular character on the Fred Allen radio show – Foghorn Leghorn, Warner Bros. cartoons
• Bill Clinton- two-term president of the United States, Clintonesque, meaning less than truthful.
• Ruth Cleveland, daughter of Pres. Grover Cleveland – Baby Ruth candy bars
• Bill Coleman – the first letter of the company name BEA Systems, is taken from Bill, a co-founder
• Samuel Colt – Colt revolver
• Christopher Columbus - many places and territories, see Columbus, Colombia, Colombo, British Columbia in Canada
• Arthur Compton – Compton effect
• Captain James Cook – Cook Islands
• Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis – Coriolis effect
• Charles-Augustin de Coulomb – coulomb - unit of electric charge, Coulomb's law
• Michael Cowpland – founded the software company Corel (from Cowpland's Research Laboratory)
• Seymour Cray – Cray Research
• Cunedda – Gwynedd
• Marie and Pierre Curie – curie, unit of radioactivity, Curium, chemical element
• Pierre Curie – Curie point
• Saint Cuthbert ("church of Cuthbert") – Kirkcudbright

D

• Jacques Daguerre – Daguerreotype
• Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz – Daimler-Benz (later DaimlerChrysler)
• John Dalton – dalton, non-SI unit of atomic mass
• Charles Darwin – Darwinism, Neural Darwinism, Social Darwinism, Darwinian Happiness, Darwin's theory of evolution, Darwinian selection, Non-darwinian evolution, Darwinian medicine, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin Mounds, Charles Darwin University, Darwin College, Cambridge, Charles Darwin National Park, Adelaide-Darwin Railway, Darwin Awards, Darwin's finches, Darwin Island, Charles Darwin Research Station, Darwin Bay, Lecocarpus darwinii (a tree species) in (Galápagos Islands), Charles Darwin Foundation
• Adi Dassler – founder of adidas
• Arthur Davidson and William Harley – Harley-Davidson
• Humphry Davy – Davy lamp
• Paul de Casteljau, de Casteljau's algorithm
• Michael Dell – founder of Dell, the computer company
• David Eisenhower, grandson of US President Dwight Eisenhower – Camp David US presidential retreat
• Thomas Derrick (c. 1600), British hangman - Derrick (lifting device)
• Melvil Dewey – Dewey Decimal System
• Thomas Edmund Dewey, American politician – Dewey, one of "Huey, Dewey and Louie", animated cartoon characters
• David Deutsch – Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle
• Bo Diddley - Popularizer of the Bo Diddley beat
• Rudolf Diesel - the diesel engine
• Paul Dirac – Dirac's constant, Dirac equation, Dirac delta function, Dirac sea, Dirac Prize, Fermi-Dirac statistics
• Walt Disney – founder, The Walt Disney Company, Disneyland
• Doily family (c. 1700)
• Ray Dolby – Dolby Stereo, Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic
• Donatello, Renaissance painter – Donatello, one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic characters
• Christian Doppler – Doppler radar, Doppler effect
• Charles Dow and Edward Jones – Dow Jones & Company
• Herbert Dow – The Dow Chemical Company
• Guillaume Dupuytren - Dupuytren's contracture, Dupuytren's fracture
• Dr. August Dvorak – Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

E

• Thomas Edison – Edison effect, Edison Records, Edisonian approach, Edison, Georgia, Edison, New Jersey, Edisonade
• Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (brother of George III of the United Kingdom), commander of British forces in Halifax – Prince Edward Island
• Gustave Eiffel – Eiffel Tower, designer
• Albert Einstein – Einstein refrigerator, einsteinium - chemical element, Bose-Einstein statistics, Bose-Einstein condensates
• Queen Elizabeth I of England, the "Virgin Queen" – Virginia and West Virginia
• Saint Elmo – St. Elmo's fire
• Loránd Eötvös – Eotvos, gravitational gradient
• M. A. Epstein – Epstein-Barr virus
• Lars Magnus Ericsson – Ericsson
• Leonhard Euler – Euler's formula, Eulerian path, Euler equations; see also: List of topics named after Leonhard Euler
• Bartolomeo Eustachi – Eustachian tube
• Sir George Everest – Mount Everest
• Ewale a Mbedi – Duala people, Douala (from a variant of his name, Dwala)

F

• Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) - the Fahrenheit scale
• Gabriele Falloppio – Fallopian tube
• Michael Faraday – farad - SI unit of capacitance, faraday - cgs unit of current Faraday constant, Faraday effect, Faraday's law of induction, Faraday's law of electrolysis
• Guy Fawkes – guy
• Enrico Fermi – fermions, Fermi energy, Fermi paradox, fermium - chemical element, Fermi-Dirac statistics. fermi (obsolete name for femtometre)
• Enzo Ferrari – founder, Ferrari
• George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. – Ferris wheel
• Richard Feynman – Feynman diagram
• Fib of the Picts, one of the seven sons of Cruithe – Fife
• B.C. Forbes – Forbes magazine
• Henry Ford – Ford Motor Company
• Matthias N. Forney – Forney locomotive
• Charles Fort – Forteana, Fortean Society, Fortean Times
• Benjamin Franklin – Franklin stove, franklin - cgs unit of electric charge
• William Fox – 20th Century Fox
• Sigmund Freud – Freudian slip
• Leonard Fuchs (1501-1566) – Fuchsia
• Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita (1920-1998) – Fujita Scale

G

• Johan Gadolin, Finnish chemist and geologist – gadolinite, the mineral after which the chemical element Gadolinium has been named
• Thomas Gage (botanist) – greengage
• Uziel Gal – the Uzi submachine gun
• Galileo Galilei – Galileo or gal, unit of acceleration
• Israel Galili – the Galil assault rifle
• Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), discovered the Galvanic response of muscles to electricity. The process of galvanization is also named after him.
• James Gamble and William Procter – Procter & Gamble
• Henry Laurence Gantt – Gantt chart
• John Garand – M1 Garand rifle
• Giuseppe Garibaldi – Garibaldi biscuits, Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi
• Gideon Gartner – Gartner
• Hermann Gartner – Gartner's duct
• Richard J. Gatling – Gatling gun
• Carl Friedrich Gauss – gauss - unit of magnetic induction, Gauss' law; see also: List of topics named after Carl Friedrich Gauss.
• Enola Gay Tibbets – Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. Tibbets' son Paul Tibbets, pilot of the plane, named it after his mother.
• Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Jacques Charles – Law of Charles and Gay-Lussac
• Lou Gehrig, American Baseball player – Lou Gehrig's Disease
• Hans Geiger – Geiger counter, Geiger-Mueller tube
• King George I of Great Britain – Georgia
• Domingo Ghirardelli – Ghirardelli Chocolate Company
• Josiah Willard Gibbs – Gibbs free energy, Gibbs phenomenon
• Thomas Gilbert – Kiribati
• Gaston Glock – GLOCK
• Kurt Gödel – Gödel's incompleteness theorem, Gödel's ontological proof
• Samuel Goldwyn – Goldwyn Picture Corporation, later merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (or MGM)
• Wilbert Gore – Gore-Tex
• Klement Gottwald – Zlín, a city in Moravia, the Czech Republic, was renamed Gottwaldov during 1949–1990.
• Ernst Gräfenberg – Gräfenberg spot (G-spot)
• Sylvester Graham – Graham crackers, Graham flour
• Thomas Graham – Graham's Law
• Robert James Graves – Graves-Basedow disease
• Louis Harold Gray – gray, unit of absorbed dose of radiation
• Vicente Guerrero – Guerrero
• Georges Guillain – Guillain-Barré syndrome
• Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) - advocate of what came to be called the guillotine

H

• Otto Hahn – hahnium, chemical element. This element name is not accepted by IUPAC. See element naming controversy
• Edwin Hall – Hall effect
• Hugh Halligan – Halligan bar
• Laurens Hammond – Hammond Organ
• Hamo, a 6th century Saxon settler and landowner – Hampshire
• John Hancock, signatory of the US Declaration of Independence – John Hancock, a signature
• Elliot Handler and Harold "Matt" Matson – Mattel
• William Hanna and Joseph Barbera – Hanna-Barbera Productions
• Gerhard Armauer Hansen – Hansen's disease
• William Harley and Arthur Davidson – Harley-Davidson
• Douglas Hartree – Hartree energy
• Gerald Harvey and Ian Norman – Harvey Norman
• Hakaru Hashimoto – Hashimoto's thyroiditis
• Hassan-i-Sabah, leader of the murderous Hashshashin cult – assassin from hassansin (this etymology is disputed)
• Stephen Hawking – Hawking radiation
• Paul Hawkins - Hawk-Eye tracking system used in cricket and other sports
• Oliver Heaviside and Arthur Edwin Kennelly – Kennelly-Heaviside layer
• Joseph Henry – henry, unit of inductance
• William Henry – Henry's law
• Heinrich Rudolf Hertz – hertz, unit of frequency
• William Hewlett and David Packard – founders, Hewlett-Packard
• Edward C. Heyde – Heyde's syndrome
• Miguel Hidalgo – Hidalgo
• David Hilbert – Hilbert's program
• Eugen von Hippel – Von Hippel-Lindau disease
• Harald Hirschsprung, Danish physician – Hirschsprung's disease
• Paul von Hindenburg – after whom the Hindenburg airship was named
• Thomas Hobbes, 17th century philosopher – Hobbes from "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip
• Thomas Hobson (1544-1630), stable manager in England - Hobson's choice, an only apparently free choice that is no choice at all
• Thomas Hodgkin – Hodgkin's disease, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
• Homer, father of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons – Homer Simpson, character in The Simpsons animated TV series
• Soichiro Honda – founder, Honda
• Mark Honeywell – founder, Honeywell
• Robin Hood, English folk hero – Robin of the Batman series
• Robert Hooke – Hooke's law
• William Henry Hoover (1849-1932) - The Hoover Company; in British English, the word "hoover" became a verb meaning "to vacuum a floor". The word "hoover" has also come to mean anything that is sucked up at a great rate ("They hoovered their way through the banquet").
• August Horch – founder of Audi (audi is Latin for horch. It means listen in English)
• James Horlick and William Horlick – founded the company Horlicks in 1873
• William Howe (1803-1852) - Howe truss bridges
• Hroc, an ancient landowner ("Hroc's fortress" + shire) – Roxburghshire
• Howard Hughes – Hughes Aircraft company, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Hughes Airwest airlines, Hughes Glomar Explorer ship
• Howard R. Hughes, Sr. – Hughes Tool Company, Baker Hughes company
• John Huss (Czech Jan Hus) – Hussite, Czechoslovak Hussite Church

I - J

• Max Immelmann – Immelmann turn used in aviation.
• Eleuthère Irénée du Pont – DuPont
• Ivan the Terrible – Ivy the Terrible from The Beano comic
• Joseph Marie Jacquard – Jacquard loom
• Jacob – Israel
• Roy Jacuzzi - inventor of the jacuzzi whirlpool bath.
• Calamity Jane – Calamity James from The Beano comic
• Karl Jansky – jansky, unit of flux density
• Jeremiah, the Biblical prophet – jeremiad
• Jeroboam, first king of the Hebrews – jeroboam wine bottle
• Edward Jones and Charles Dow – Dow Jones & Company
• Brian David Josephson – Josephson junction, Josephson effect
• James Prescott Joule – joule, unit of energy, unit of work, unit of heat

K

• Franz Kafka – adjective Kafkaesque
• Mikhail Kalashnikov – the Avtomat Kalashnikova series of weapons, including the AK-47, the Kalashnikov Handheld Machine Gun or Ruchnoi Pulemet Kalashnikova obraztsa 1974g (RPK-74)
• Ingvar Kamprad – the first two letters of IKEA, the home furnishings retailer he founded
• Gaetano Kanizsa, Italian psychologist – Kanizsa triangle
• Moritz Kaposi, Hungarian dermatologist – Kaposi's sarcoma
• Theodore von Kármán – Karman line
• Tadao Kashio – founder of Casio
• Shozo Kawasaki – founder, Kawasaki Heavy Industries
• Lord Kelvin – kelvin, unit of thermodynamic temperature
• John F. Kennedy – John F. Kennedy International Airport, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Kennedy Center Honors, John F. Kennedy University
• Arthur Edwin Kennelly and Oliver Heaviside – Kennelly-Heaviside layer
• Brian W. Kernighan – the third letter of the name awk, a computer pattern/action language, is taken from Kernighan
• John Kerr (physicist) – Kerr effect
• Wilhelm Killing – Killing vector field
• Gustav Kirchhoff – Kirchhoff's Laws
• Donald Knuth – Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm
• Wladimir Peter Köppen – Köppen climate classification
• Gerard Kuiper – Kuiper Belt

L - Z

See List of eponyms (L-Z)

An asterisk designates people who became eponyms despite their stated wishes not to.

See also

• Lists of etymologies
• List of eponymous adjectives in English
• List of eponymous laws
• List of adages named after people
• List of observations named after people
• List of people
• List of toponyms
• Category:Eponymous albums