Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010

[snip discussion of "eponymous"]

It does seem to be a recent thing, doesn't it? I looked through the New
Yorker database, which only finds it from 1987 on. That one is from my
favorite writer John McPhee:

    ... than a certain red-trimmed cream-hulled vessel
    called Mississippi, bearing Major General Thomas
    Sands. Each year, in late summer or early fall, the
    Mississippi comes down its eponymous river ...

So that's a case where the boat is named for the river, so the river is
what is called eponymous. The source of the name. That shows up again
here, in 2000:

    outside Coiffure Salon Martine the eponymous
    hairdresser and her friends sat in white plastic
    chairs

The hairdresser is the source of the name of the shop, so the
hairdresser is what is eponymous. So I think that is the original use.

But it also starts showing up the other way around. From 2000:

    Rat Press, a subsidiary of Rat Entertainment, an
    eponymous entity founded by Brett Ratner

Brett Ratner is the source of the name, but it is the "entity" that is
called eponymous.

Skipping some confusing examples involving "eponymously named" and other
constructions (was a restaurant named for a cocktail or vice versa? I
don't know).

    [2005 restaurant review] Shake Shack ... the eponymous
     shakes are classic    

There the [eponymous] shake is the source of the restaurant name.

    [2006 restaurant review] Morimoto ... Chef Masaharu
    Morimoto ... who makes nightly rounds in his
    eponymous restaurant to scattered applause
   
So there is the other way around, the chef is the source of the name of
the restaurant, but it is the restaurant that is labeled "eponymous".

     2006 Kenny Shopsin's eponymous restaurant,

      2008 Ligaya Mishan reviews Chop Suey [restaurant],
    whose tongue-in-cheek name has little to do with the
    actual menu: it's not Chinese, and the eponymous dish
     isn't served here    

What I am coming to think is that the current definition really has
almost nothing to do with the source of the name, what was named in
honor of what (or "after" or "for"), but simply meaning "of the same
name."

The chef and his eponymous restaurant -- they have the same name.
The boat and the eponymous river -- they have the same name.

It's easier that way. One is named for the other, but the word
"eponymous" no longer tells you which was named for which.

Didn't we come to the same conclusion with "namesake"?

Look at this one --

 2004 John Heinz -- the heir to the eponymous condiment fortune

The man wasn't the source of the condiment name -- that would have been
his grandfather or something. The condiment wasn't the source of this
man's name -- though it was the source of the *fortune*, does that
count? What we do know is the man and the condiment have the same name,
and it's not just a coincidence.

So "of the same name" is not enough, you have to imply something
somewhere was named after something.

That usage is so common that I wouldn't have even thought to question
the original quote from The Times.

sjdevnull@yahoo.com filted:

ObFeebleAttemptToMakeUpForTheLackOfA2009SDC:  What artist (performer, not band)
has released two eponymous albums?...

(The answer is cooked, but at least one of the answers is Chinese and has
released albums with both an English and a Chinese name; I'm thinking of a
different one)....r

I had nothing to do with its establishment, but I still think of the
rather nice Hotel Stephanie near here as 'Hotel Eponyme' after a
friend said we'd meet up there.  I do not, however, think of the tram
stop of the same name as 'l'arret eponyme'.

cheers,
S. in B.