Stories That Words Tell Us

by Elizabeth O'Neill

But many things are called by the names of persons who were not inventors at all. Sometimes a new kind of clothing is called after some great person just to make it seem distinguished. A Chesterfield overcoat is so called because the tailor who first gave this kind of coat that name wished to suggest that it had all the elegance displayed in the clothing of the famous eighteenth-century dandy, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield. So the well-known Raglan coats and sleeves took their name first from an English general, Baron Raglan, who fought in the Crimean War. Both Wellington and Blücher, the two generals who fought together and defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, gave their names to different kinds of boots. Bluchers are strong leather half boots or high shoes, and Wellingtons are high riding boots reaching to the bend of the knee at the back of the leg, and covering the knee in front. Wellington is supposed to have worn such boots in his campaigns.

Another article of clothing which was very popular with ladies at one time was the Garibaldi blouse, which was so called after the red shirts which were worn by the followers of the famous soldier who won liberty for Italy, Garibaldi.

The rather vulgar name for ladies' divided skirts—bloomers—came from the name of an American woman, Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer, who used to wear a skirt which reached to her knee, and then was divided into Turkish trousers tied round her ankles.

A great many different kinds of carriages and vehicles have been called by the names of people. The brougham, which is still a favourite form of closed carriage, got its name from Lord Brougham. The old four-wheeled carriage with a curved glass front got its name from the Duke of Clarence, who afterwards became King William IV.; and the carriage known as the Victoria was so called as a compliment to Queen Victoria. We do not hear much of this kind of carriage now; but the two-wheeled cab known as the hansom is still to be seen in the streets of London, in spite of the coming of the taxicab. This form of conveyance took its name from an architect who invented it in 1834. An earlier kind of two-wheeled carriage invented a few years before this, but which was displaced by the hansom, was the stanhope, also called after its inventor. The general name for a two-wheeled carriage of this sort used to be the phaeton, and this was not taken from any person, but from the sun-chariot in which, according to the old Greek story, the son of Helios rode to destruction when he had roused the anger of the great Greek god, Zeus.

The names of old Greeks and Romans have given us many words. We speak of a very rich man as a Crœsus, a word which was the name of a fabulously rich tyrant in Ancient Greece. A person who is supposed to be a great judge of food, and devoted to the pleasures of the table, is called an epicure, from the old Greek philosopher Epicurus, who taught that the chief aim of life was to feel pleasure. The word cynic, too, comes from the name given to certain Greek philosophers who despised pleasure. The name was originally a nickname for these philosophers, and was taken from the Greek word kunos, "dog."

We describe a person who chooses to live a very hard life as a Spartan, because the people of the old Greek state of Sparta planned their lives so that every one should be disciplined and drilled to make good soldiers, and were never allowed to indulge in too much comfort or too many amusements, lest they should become lazy in mind and weak in body. A Draconian system of law is one which has no mercy, and preserves the name of Draco, a statesman who was appointed to draw up laws for the Athenians six hundred and twenty-one years before the birth of Our Lord, and who drew up a very strict code of laws.

The word mausoleum, which is now used to describe any large or distinguished tomb, comes from the tomb built for Mausolus, king of Caria (in Greek Asia Minor), by his widow, Artemisia, in 353 B.C. The tomb itself, which rises to a height of over one hundred and twelve feet, is now to be seen in the British Museum.

The verb to hector, meaning "to bully," is taken from the name of the Trojan hero Hector, in the famous old Greek poem, the Iliad. Hector was not, as a matter of fact, a bully, but a very brave man, and it is curious that his name should have come to be used in this unpleasant sense. The other great Greek poem, the Odyssey, has given us the name of one of its characters for a fairly common English word. A mentor is a person who gives us wise advice, but the original Mentor was a character in this great poem, the wise counsellor of Telemachus.

From the names of great Romans, too, we have many words. If we describe a person as a Nero, every one knows that this means a cruel tyrant. Nero was the worst of all the Roman emperors, and the story tells that he was so heartless that he played on his violin while watching the burning of Rome. Some people even said that he himself set the city on fire. Again, the name of Julius Cæsar, who was the first imperial governor of Rome, though he was never called emperor, has given us a common name. Cæsar came to mean "an emperor;" and the modern German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar come from this name of the "noblest Roman of them all."

An earlier Roman was Fabius Cunctator (or "Fabius the Procrastinator"), a general who, instead of fighting actual battles with the Carthaginian Hannibal, the great enemy of Rome, preferred to tire him out by keeping him waiting and never giving battle. His name has given us the word Fabian, to describe this kind of tactics.