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The etymology of these words will blow your mind. Like German chocolate cake. It... isn't from Germany. It's named after a guy named Samuel German. What?! Join host Erin McCarthy as we explore the strange world of language and linguistics. These eponyms are sure to surprise you. Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Discord: https://discord.io/mentalfloss Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 20 Words & Terms Named After People | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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All guys are named after Guy Fawkes. Literally. The word Guy in the man sense is believed to be
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a nod to the most infamous co-conspirator of the failed gunpowder plot of 1605. Every November 5th
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British people would commemorate the event by burning raggedy, scarecrowish effigies of Guy
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Fawkes in the streets. They called these effigies guys, which got co-opted for any badly dressed or
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foolish person, and then, by the late 19th century, for any man in general. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy
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editor-in-chief of Mental Floss, and this is The List Show. The English language is fit to burst
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with terms named after people, aka eponyms. Some namesakes are pretty obvious. Elizabethan
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after Queen Elizabeth I, Orwellian after George Orwell, and so forth. Others are much sneakier
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either because the words don't sound like names at all, or because you just never really thought
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about where they came from. This episode of The List Show is devoted to some of our favorites
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from mesmerized to pants. Let's get started. Whenever you're mesmerized by something, thank Franz Anton Mesmer for giving you a way
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to describe the experience. Mesmer was the 18th century German physician behind mesmerism, the use of a magnet to move
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fluids inside the body to heal illness. Mesmer's theories and practices were widely discredited during his lifetime since any
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positive effects were illusions caused by patients' imaginations, but his influence lives on in the lexicon
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Luigi Galvani gave us a verb too, galvanize, meaning to stimulate or excite as if by an
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electroshock, in Merriam-Webster's words. Galvani was an 18th century Italian physicist whose experiments with dead frogs deepened our understanding of how electricity is conducted
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and how it affects organic matter. Electricity produced by chemical action became known as
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galvanism. By the mid-1800s, people were using galvanize in its modern figurative sense
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no dead frogs involved Fun fact Galvani experiments were also an inspiration for Mary Shelley Frankenstein Salmon can harbor bacteria in the Salmonella genus but that not why it called that Really it should be called Smithella because Theobald Smith was the first person
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to isolate a bacterium in that genus in 1885. But it was Daniel Elmer Salmon who oversaw
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Smith's research program and was listed first on the paper about the discovery. Who knows
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maybe Smith didn't want his name attached to something so sickening anyway
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That was the case with French physician Joseph Guillotin, who suggested that France standardize
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its execution method during the French Revolution. Guillotin didn't invent the guillotine
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In fact, he was totally anti-death penalty. He just thought it would be more humane if beheadings were done with one mechanical chop
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rather than by executioners of varying skill. When France took his advice and built such a machine, everyone started calling it the guillotine
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Joseph Guillotin's family was so appalled that they later lobbied the government to change
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the name of the device. when their request was refused, they changed their name instead
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Maybe you assumed Gardenia's got their moniker from where you might find them. They're actually named after Alexander Gardin, an 18th century Scottish naturalist who did
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most of his work in South Carolina. Gardin didn't name the genus of flowering plants after himself
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His fellow naturalist, John Ellis, named it in his honor. While we're on misleading monikers, German chocolate cake wasn't christened for its
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country of origin. The dessert — layers of chocolate cake filled and topped with coconut pecan frosting — was
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created in Dallas, Texas in 1957. It's named after Samuel German, who developed the sweet
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baking chocolate used in the recipe. And macadamia nuts don't hail from macadamia because macadamia
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isn't a place. The nuts, which are technically seeds, and the trees they grow on are endemic to
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Australia. 19th century German expat Ferdinand von Mueller named them after his Scottish colleague
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John McAdams Another nutty eponym is praline These days the word refers to a candied nut or or a paste made from them Candied almonds are often considered the inaugural pralines but the term wasn always specific to nuts According to the Oxford English Dictionary it could refer to any confection made by browning
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and boiling sugar, and early citations from 1662 feature lemons and violets
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Praline's namesake is Maréchal du Plessis et Prélin, a 17th century French nobleman
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whose personal chef purportedly invented the sweet treat. But plenty of things are named for their creators. Shrapnel originally referred to a
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a specific kind of exploding shell invented by Henry Schrapnel, a British artillery officer
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in the late 18th century. These days, we use the term more generally for fragments generated
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by an explosion. Braille was invented by Louis Braille, a 19th century French educator who
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went blind after a childhood accident. The diesel engine was invented by German mechanical
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engineer Rudolf Diesel in the late 19th century. And leotards were invented by Jules Léotard
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the French acrobat who also invented the flying trapeze in 1859. More than a century later, Roy Jacuzzi debuted the first integrated whirlpool bath. That
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particular bath was called the Roman. But the name of the family company, Jacuzzi, eventually
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caught on as shorthand for any whirlpool bath. The kind of frilly napkin or paper mat we call doily was also named for its purveyor
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Doily, among other spellings, anglicized from the French doilie. Mr. Doily of late 17th
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century London was also known for his affordable wool that was popular for summer garments
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Sources from around that time mention doily suits, doily coats, and doily petticoats
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In 1530, Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro published a poem titled Syphilis, or the French disease
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It follows the fictional story of Syphilis, a shepherd who angers Apollo and gets cursed with a contagion that we now call Syphilis
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Fracastoro coined both the shepherd's name, which ends in U-S, and the name of the disease
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which ends in I-S. It's unclear where he got the idea. One possible inspiration was Ovid metamorphosis in which Niobe daughter of Tantalus has a son named Syphilis He killed as punishment for his mother hubris By an arrow though not an STI Paparazzi are also named after
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a character. Paparazzo, the opportunistic society photographer played by Walter Santesso in 1960's
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La Dolce Vita. Director Federico Fellini didn't invent the word. It was already an Italian surname
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In his autobiography, Fellini said he found it in an opera libretto. But his screenplay co-writer
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Ennio Flaiano, remembered the pair coming upon it in a travelogue called By the Ionian Sea
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Whatever its provenance, Fellini described the name as like a buzzing insect, hovering
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darting, stinging. Fitting for a photog on the prowl for the perfect shot. Gargantuan seems like a fitting synonym for gigantic based on sound alone. It was inspired
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by a character too, Gargantua, one of the titular giants from the five books of The Lives and Deeds
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of Gargantua and Pantagruel, written by 16th century French humanist François Robelet
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Pantagruil also inspired an adjective meaning gigantic, pantagruilian. It's a pantagruilian bummer that people don't say pantagruilian anymore. It's less of a bummer that women
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don't have to wear bloomers under their skirts and dresses anymore. The original bloomers
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were long, loose pants, cinched at the ankle, worn beneath a knee-length skirt. 19th century
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American suffragist and editor Amelia Junks Bloomer popularized the bottoms to the point
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that everyone started calling them by her surname. The getup was much more comfortable
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and less constricting than the longer, fuller skirts of the era, but it doesn't come close
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to 21st century leggings, which incidentally are named after Stacy Legging. Just kidding
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Bloomers aren't the only pants named after a person. So are pants. The term pants is short
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for pantaloons, referring to the trousers worn by the Italian commedia dell'art character Pantaloon
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Pantaloon was a goofy old man clad in long red tights that covered his feet. The word pantaloons
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didn't just describe that one type of bottoms. And needless to say, neither does pants
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That's it for this episode of The List Show. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time
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