An eponym is a word that derives from, or that is believed to derive from, the name of a real or ficticious person.
Eponym comes from the Ancient Greek ἐπώνυμος (epṓnumos), from ἐπί (epí, – upon) & ὄνυμα (ónuma – name).
Examples of eponyms include:
Boycott, from Charles Boycott, an English land agent based in Ireland in the 19th century.
Caesarean section, Tsar, Czar and Kaiser from Gaius Julius Caesar, Roman consul and general in the first century BC.
Europe, and variants, from Εὐρώπη (Eurṓpē), the mother of King Minos of Crete in Greek mythology.
Dunce, from John Duns Scotus (c 1265-1308), a philospher whose work was admired at first, but was later attacked and ridiculed. His followers were known as Dunsmen or Dunses, and the word dunce eventually became associated with lack of learning or opposition to new thinking. By the 1580s, a dunce was a dim witted person [source].
Leotard, from Jules Leotard, a French acrobat and trapeze artist in the 1800s
One of the things that we discussed at the French conversation group last night was how to translate the term handyman into French.
According to Wikipedia, a handyman, or handyperson or handyworker is:
a person skilled at a wide range of repairs, typically around the home. These tasks include trade skills, repair work, maintenance work, are both interior and exterior, and are sometimes described as “side work”, “odd jobs” or “fix-up tasks”. Specifically, these jobs could be light plumbing jobs such as fixing a leaky toilet or light electric jobs such as changing a light fixture.
The term may apply to someone who makes a living doing such work, or to do-it-yourselfers.
The French equivalent on Wikipedia is homme à tout faire (“man who does everything”).
In the Reverso Dictionary a handyman is translated into French as a bricoleur or homme à tout faire. The former is labelled as a do-it-yourselfer, and the latter as a servant. So it seems the connotations of these words are not quite the same as in English.
Perhaps a better translation of homme à tout faire is factotum, which is Latin for “do everything”, and is an old word for a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities, or a general servant.
When you hear the word handyman, what does it mean to you?
While learning a foreign language, the teachers sometimes remark that “even native speakers get this wrong. Don’t imitate them”.
How could native speakers possibly be wrong?? If they’re not the standard, then what is?? An artificial one from the textbook?? We learn a language to communicate with the natives, not with the textbook, right??
The debate looks at these questions from different perspectives. Many commenters agree that native speakers do make mistakes in their own languages, and give examples from a variety of languages. Others argue that native speakers of a language don’t all speak the same version of their language. There are also comments about native speakers not knowing the grammar of their own language, or at least not being able to explain why words are used in particular ways.
When field linguists document previously undocumented languages, they work out how the language is used by the people who speak it. They don’t learn the language, then start telling native speakers that they are making mistakes. However, with languages that have standardised versions, especially written versions, people come to believe that the standard version is the ‘right’ version, and any deviation from it is a ‘mistake’. Thus non-standard varieties may be looked down on, ridiculed, and even erradicated by teachers in schools.
Can a native speaker make mistakes in their own language?
Yes. There are various kinds of mistakes a native speaker might make. Such as disfluencies, when you mispronounce words, or get your syllables or words jumbled up. Or you may spoonerise, as in par cark, rather than car park.
You may confuse words with similar sounds or meanings, such as effect and affect. You may miss out words – I certainly do when writing sometimes, and don’t always realise, as I know what I intended to write, so when I read the text again, I mentally fill in any missing words.
Spelling errors are also common, especially in English, as are orthographic errors, such as adding apostrophe’s when they’re not necessary, or forgetting to add them. Or, using too many, or too few commas.
Here are some examples of ‘mistakes’ native speakers make in English:
Many native speakers don’t know the grammar of their own language
This is a common misconception that often appears in discussions about language, especially when talking about how words or particular grammatical features ‘should’ be used. For example, the use of less and fewer in English. You may not know all the grammatical terms, such as noun, adjective, gender, case, etc, and the conventions like use to apostrophes, but you can use the language effectively. Native speakers of English are unlikely to say something like “To the shop went I morning this” or “Grammar very important is”, unless you’re imitating Yoda.
John McWhorter often talks about things like this on his podcast, Lexicon Valley. On a recent show he mentioned that the less / fewer distinction is an arbitary rule made up by someone in the 19th century. People have been using these words interchangeably for a long time without any confusion. So if someone tells you that the the signs in supermarkets shouldn’t say “five items or less” but “five items or fewer”, you could refer them to his podcast.
In Welsh textbooks and grammar books you are taught how to use mutations – that is the way initial consonants change in various circumstances. For example, Dw i’n byw ym Mangor = I live in Bangor, Dw i’n mynd i Fangor = I’m going to Bangor. Native speakers of Welsh don’t always use these as described in the books – sometimes they mutate, sometimes they don’t. So who is right? The native speakers, or the writers of textbooks and grammars? Or both?
Languages change all the time. New words and grammatical constructions emerge. The meanings of words can expand, or contract, and the ways they’re used changes. Such changes often happen in informal language first. Some of them at least will eventually become part of the standard language.
If your utterances and scribblings are understood by others, then you have managed to communicate effectively, even if you deviate from the perceived standard version of the language.
But we have to have standard’s, don’t we? And there are some things that you just shoudn’t do, like starting a sentence with a conjunction, splitting an infinitve – to happily do so is just wrong. And to finish a sentence with a preposition is something I can’t be having with! 😉
