Hello, Katy
How did you guess that I liked Audrey Hepburn? She was a huge artist.
I watched many movies with her an I liked them all.
“My Fair Lady” is the one which has a special place in my flashbacks. Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison - the best choice for Eliza Doolittle and professor Henry Higgins, remember? I’m sure you do.
Thank you for sending me the picture.
Regards,
Monica
Dear Christina,
Wikipedia:An eponym is a person or thing, whether real or fictional, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named.[1] For example, Léon Theremin is the eponym of the theremin; Louis Braille is the eponym of the Braille word system created by him for use by the blind.
Oxford: a person or thing, or the name of a person or thing, from which place, an invention, a discovery etc. gets name.
In Hungarian we say “névadó” which I would translate word by word it meant sb who gave name to sth/sb.
In French: éponyme=a word or name derived from the name of a person; a person after whom a discovery,invention, place etc.is name.
It is of Greek origin: adjective.
from Gk epōnumos ‘given as a name, giving one’s name to someone or something’, from epi ‘upon’ + onoma ‘name’.
So the Hungarian use isn’t far away from the Greek.
I defended the Hungarian use, aren’t I?
Bye:
Kati
Dear Monica,
We have a taste in common I loved me also Audrey Hepburn. My granddaughter received her name after her, because my daughter knew that I loved her.
Have you seen in the War and Peace than Natasa Rostova, or Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck, of course I’ve seen in My fair Lady, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and in others.
My favourites were the first two mentioned ones.
Bye:
Kati
Hello Christina,
Your letter occurred to me during the day several times. I don’t like when I don’t agree with somebody and in my first surprise my answer didn’t point out the essence of her mistake. Unfortunately I had a very hard day so I didn’t have possibility to answer sooner.
Chritina you wrote to me" it is uncertain how Oscars got their nickname." (I never heard in plural because we speak about the first sample! )
You misinterpreted my letter (intentionally or not?)
YOU:
ME:
As poor Oscar uncle probably never saw the statuette when her cousin exclaimed ‘Wow it looks like my Oscar uncle’!. As this name was pleasing to a columnist , he had been named the statuette ‘Oscar’ and published its name in a newspaper. But he can’t be the eponim.
Your first sentence on this thread:
After:
Oscar I dared to say this sentence: An academy librarian remarked that it resembled her Uncle Oscar.
Statuette after a while named after Oscar uncle-if I follow your sentence construction.(according Bez’s link there are even other guessing, but we spoke about this one.)
Does it derive Oscar uncle’s name or not? What is the difference? Only we know who invented the similarity and your examples was no inventor probably their name had been forgotten or uninteresting. It makes no difference to me.
I am sorry Christina we call this kind of correction: hair-splitting.
Kati
For the sake of fair game…Wikipedia about this.
Naming
The root of the name Oscar is contested. One biography of Bette Davis claims that she named the Oscar after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson;[11] one of the earliest mentions in print of the term Oscar dates back to a Time magazine article about the 1934 6th Academy Awards.[12] Walt Disney is also quoted as thanking the Academy for his Oscar as early as 1932.[13] Another claimed origin is that the Academy’s Executive Secretary, Margaret Herrick, first saw the award in 1931 and made reference to the statuette’s reminding her of her “Uncle Oscar” (a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce).[14] Columnist Sidney Skolsky was present during Herrick’s naming and seized the name in his byline, “Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette ‘Oscar’”.[15] The trophy was officially dubbed the “Oscar” in 1939 by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.[16] Another legend reports that the Norwegian-American Eleanor Lilleberg, executive secretary to Louis B. Mayer, saw the first statuette and exclaimed, “It looks like King Oscar II!”.[17][irrelevant citation]
I like Bez’s link. It is the most authentic for me.
Hi Kati,
An eponym is a person after whom something has been named, as well as the word (or name) itself.
I’ll try and put it into slightly different words than I did here:
An eponym is not someone who had or might have had the idea of naming something.
An eponym (in this case) is the person after whom something was named. So, to be able to say that the five people you mention are all possible eponyms for the Oscar award, they should all have one thing in common: they all would have to share the same name – Oscar.
That’s what I think. It’s my understanding and I doubt it very much that it can be called “splitting hairs”.
Hello Christina,
You say that it is your problem that Oscar uncle was not eponym of this statuette ?
Who on earth could be? According Bez’s article Oscar uncle was its eponym.
Why do you embarrass you that poor woman - who had been surprised by their similarity - cried out loud from her surprise. “It is like my Uncle Oscar”! Oscar is a good name for this prize.
I am sure that your examples had helpers who recommended these persons for eponym but they lost in the labyrinth of the history.
My letter tried to be similar to an Agatha Christie’s riddle. It wasn’t successful. If I had known that this will disturb you I never would have written this topic.
Uncle Oscar is the eponym of Oscar statuette - as nobody knew him only his cousin - she helped his uncle involuntarily into becoming Oscar’s eponym.
This is my opinion.
Bye:
Kati
Obviously, we are getting nowhere here, Kati.
Signed – for the record: Cristina, no eponym expert! 