Nuts and Bolts: freight-train eponyms.

 Stigler's Law states that any scientific law named after a person refers to science that was discovered by someone else.

I heard about Stigler's Law on the BBC Radio programme Laws That Aren't Laws, which you can hear HERE. It even has an interview with Professor Stigler himself in it.

The part of the programme which particularly struck me was the idea of the freight-train eponym. (An eponym is a person's name given to something else, like, say, Halley's Comet.)

The thing about freight trains, as far as freight-train eponyms are concerned, is that they come as a long series of trucks one after the other.

Now, think again about Halley's Comet:

It's called after the astronomer Edmund Halley, who was the person who worked out when it was going to been seen again from Earth. But the comet had been noticed by people long before that (the illustration above is from the eleventh century Bayeux Tapestry).

Named people associated with the comet before Halley include Tigranes the Great of Armenia (140 - 55 BC), who put the thing on his coins; the Roman Cassius Dio; and the Frankish King Louis the Pious (he was Charlemagne's son).

To name Halley's Comet more fairly it should be called the Tigranes the Great-Cassius Dio-Louis the Pious-Halley's Comet.

Four names is generally reckoned to be the limit for a freight-train eponym. 

But that doesn't stop them being ridiculous, does it.

Word To Use Today: an eponym. The Greek word epōnumos means giving a significant name.