Posted by Dan on 06/04/07 12:57

On Jun 4, 5:03 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> Yes, indeed. I think there is a general phenomena under which
> this comes. Many names, for instance, had their origins in words
> that had natural meaning, connotations from occupations, places
> of birth, and other things. It is rare to even think of these
> "natural" meanings with proper names, they no longer "mean"
> anything, their meaning is exhausted in acting as labels to refer
> to individuals, their origins long forgotten.

And it's happened in the other direction too; lots of words derive
from proper names, like "boycott" (after somebody named Boycott who
was, er, boycotted) and "chauvanist" (I don't think I spelled that
right... Mozilla's spellchecker is underlining it... but then again,
Mozilla's spellchecker is underlining "spellchecker" too) is after
some French politician named "Chauvan" (which I may have misspelled
too). (I can't look anything up... Wikipedia is having server
problems! And of course I'm too lazy to get up and grab my
dictionary.)

--
Dan

[Back to original message]