WARD'S BOOK OF EPONYMS

Who gave their names to what

If you have ever wondered who gave their names to things and places, you will find the answer here. You can read about John Sandwich, George Dallas, Gustave Eiffel, James of York (New York), Clarence Birds-Eye, Charles Baltimore and many many others.

This is Ward's Book of Eponyms where you will find a large list of people who had things named after them. This page is devoted to things named after people whose name begins with the letter:

B

B and Q was founded in 1969 by David Quayle (1936-2010) and his brother-in-law, Richard Block. Quayle considered himself the ‘ideas man’ and left the day to day running of the business to Block, who left the business after only two years. Quayle had served in the RAF where he had shown a penchant for business in supplying goods to his mates at less than NAAFI prices. In 1980, he sold out to Woolworths and joined the main board.
Baloney Bologna, a gastronomic city in northern Italy, is famous for spaghetti Bolognese and baloney sausage. The name of the sausage has been corrupted to baloney from Bologna, and the word has another usage. Baloney just means nonsense. The phrase proliferated during the early 1930s, when there was a popular jingle
     ‘Dress it in silks and make it look phoney,
      No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney.’
So baloney became another word for phoney.

Baltimore
is a city named for Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, governor and proprietor of the colony of Maryland. The town was founded in 1729 and named after Lord Baltimore by The Maryland colonial General Assembly. Lord Baltimore had a charter from Charles I of England for the new colony, named Maryland for the Queen Henrietta Maria, but he never visited Maryland. Lady Baltimore, Anne Arundell, gave her name to Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The family name Baltimore derives from their estate in Ireland known as ‘the town of the big house’ translated from the Irish ‘Baile na Tighe Mór’.
Baroque is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century and characterized by elaborate ornamentation, dynamism and emotion. Dictionaries often ascribe the origin of the word to the Portuguese word barroco, irregularly shaped pearl. In fact, the French word baroque comes from the precursor of the style, Federigo Barocci (1528–1612), an Italian painter whose ostentatious work was employed by the Vatican to induce a sense of Counter-Reformation. Some of his most stirring works can be found in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome.
Bartlett Pear The first pear variety in America was The Seckel, discovered by Mr Seckel in the Delaware Valley. In 1799, pear trees were brought to America from England by Captain Thomas Brewer, and were planted on his farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The farm was later bought by Enoch Bartlett (1779–1860), who grew and promoted the fruit under the name Bartlett. These yellow pears moved west to Oregon and Washington, where they enjoy a longer growing season. About 1920, it was discovered that the Bartlett was the same variety as Williams Pear, which thrived in Southern England.
begonia Michel Bégon (1638–1710) was a French diplomat under Louis XIV. He served a long period as governor of Santo Domingo. His duties were not onerous and as he was an enthusiastic amateur botanist, he made detailed studies of the plant life and collected specimens. One of his tropical plants was a genus of a flowering herb with ornamental leaves and flowery clusters. Bégon took the plant back to France and propagated it. It became popular with gardeners there and in 1787, a French botanist, Charles Plumier, introduced it to England. He named it after its discoverer, calling it the begonia.
berserk In Norse mythology Berserk was a hero of the eighth century, who went into battle without armour and fought with reckless fury. In old Scandinavian, the word meant ‘bear shirt’, meaning a savage wearing animal skins. Berserk had twelve sons who fought like their father and were called Berserkers. Berserker came to be applied to Norse warriors who were supposed to be able to assume the form of bears or wolves.

A Norse image of a Berserker.

Big Ben is the famous bell in the clock tower by the Houses of Parliament. It is used by the BBC, News at Ten and other broadcasters to symbolise Britishness. The bell was cast in 1856 but was flawed by a crack and the office of public works ordered it to be recast. It was completed in 1858 and weighed 13 tons. The press congratulated the commissioner of works, Sir Benjamin Hall, on his diligence and fanciful suggested that the bell should be named in his honour. They suggested the name Big Ben and the name stuck.
Big Bertha was a massive gun, a howitzer, which the German army used effectively in World War I. These machines were capable of bombarding French cities from the distance of 76 miles, safely within the German lines. They were made at the Skoda Works in Austria-Hungary, but it was popularly believed that the Krupp armament company was the manufacturer. The gun was named for the daughter and sole heir of the company’s founder, Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1886–1957). The German soldiers referred to the gun as ‘die dicke Bertha’ (Fat Bertha) but the name Big Bertha caught on with the British troops.
bikini The two-piece swimsuit was first seen on the beaches of the French Riviera, soon after the United States began testing atom bombs on the Bikini atoll of the Marshall Islands. Some people speculated that the impact of the swimwear was similar to the effect of the atomic bomb. In fact, the new beach attire closely resembled the skimpy clothing worn by the ladies of Bikini atoll.
Bird's Custard
Alfred Bird was a chemist and druggist in Birmingham. Because his wife was unable to tolerate certain foods, Bird turned his hand to producing an eggless custard. He had a pharmacy in Bell Street, Birmingham, where the sign read Alfred Bird F.C.S., Experimental Chemist. As a Fellow of the Chemical Society, he lectured locally and wrote for the Philosophical Magazine. Bird died in 1878 and is buried in Key Hill Cemetery, Icknield Street, Hockley, Birmingham, B18 6PP. (Grave no 164 section H)
 

Alfred Bird's grave

Birds Eye The name comes from Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956) an American fur dealer whose work took him to the chilly reaches of Labrador. He noticed that caribou meat frozen and then thawed was perfectly palatable. However if food was frozen in the home and then thawed, all you got was a nasty mess. The secret he discovered was in quick freezing. He set up a company in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1926, which dealt in frozen fish. The company was called General Seafoods and used Bird’s Eye as a brand name.
Bloomers were designed and first worn in 1850 by Mrs Elizabeth Smith Miller. But the most fervent advocate was Mrs Amelia Bloomer (1818–1894), editor of The Lily, a journal of the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society. She described the new garment in her journal ‘We would have a skirt reaching down to nearly half way between the knee and the ankle, and not made quite so full as is the present fashion’. She was often accused of indecency as the wearer’s ankles were on display, the ankle being an erogenous zone in the nineteenth century. She was also blamed for encouraging women to wear men’s clothing contrary to the teachings of The Bible. (Deuteronomy 22:5) She replied ‘There was no distinction in the fig leaves worn by Adam and Eve.’

Mrs Amelia Bloomer wearing bloomers.

Bluebeard a serial wife-killer. Bluebeard is a character in Charles Perrault's story Barbe Bleue published 1697. The heroine of the narrative is Fatima who marries the sinister Bluebeard despite her brothers’ advice. Bluebeard gave her the keys to his castle, but forbids her to open a certain door. She is too curious and enters the room where she finds the bodies of Bluebeard's six former wives hung up like sides of meat. Before Fatima becomes the seventh victim, her brothers come to her aid and kill Bluebeard. The story is based on Gilles de Rais, (1404–1440) a French general and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake for his multiple murders. Perrault also wrote Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots and other classic fairy tales collected from ancient sagas.
Bluestocking The expression bluestocking came about in the mid-eighteenth century. There was a society of ladies who had decided to take up literary pursuits and invite learned men such as Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, and David Garrick to lecture to them. One of their lecturers was botanist and poet, Benjamin Stillingfleet, who could not afford black silk stockings, as worn by gentlemen of the day, and so wore worsted blue stockings when attending the society’s meetings. The society came to be known as the Bluestocking Society, a derisive term for ladies who acquire learning.
 

The Bluestocking Society

Blurb In 1906, B. W. Huebish, publisher issued a work by Gelett Burgess entitled Are You a Bromide? Burgess was the author of several works including Why Men Hate Women (1927) and Look Eleven Years Younger (1937), but his works did not seem to capture the public imagination. In order to publicise the work, Huebish created a startling dust jacket for the book, which showed an image of a coquettish young woman expounding the virtues of the contexts of the text. Huebish named his character Belinda Blurb.
Bobby: A British policeman The British statesman Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) was elected to Parliament aged 21. In 1812 he was appointed chief secretary for Ireland, where he established the Royal Irish Constabulary. The Irish nicknamed him ‘Orange Peel’ for his support of the Protestant Orangemen and they called his officers peelers. In 1822, he was appointed home secretary and created the Metropolitan Police. The nickname for London policemen became bobby. Peel became Britain's prime minister in 1834 and again in 1841. In 1850, he was thrown from a horse and the horse fell on him and killed him. He is buried near his home in Drayton Bassett. (St Peter’s Churchyard, Salts Lane, Drayton Bassett, Near Tamworth, B78 3UD)

Statue of Sir Robert Peel in Parliament Square, London.

Bob’s your uncle is an expression that has been in use in colloquial speech since the late nineteenth century. It simply means ‘you're all set.’ The original Bob was British Prime Minister Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, who in 1887 appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour to the prestigious post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, a clear case of nepotism. The appointment shocked the political world and brought about the phrase ‘Bob's your uncle!’ Balfour followed this position with successive Cabinet posts and in 1902, became Prime Minister.
booze E. G. Booz, a Philadelphia distiller sold whiskey in a bottle bearing his name and shaped like a log cabin. William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the USA, used the bottle successfully in the 1840 election, to publicise the fact that he had been born in a log cabin and therefore a man of the people. It was once widely thought that Mr Booz was the originator of the word but the attribution of an eponym to him is false. ‘Booze’ comes from Middle English ‘bousen’, to carouse or to drink to excess. Edmund Spencer in The Faerie Queen (1590) writes of a ‘boozing can’.
boycott A boycott is an organised refusal to have anything to do with a person or business. In Ireland in 1880, tenant farmers were struck by crop failure and could not meet the rent. Landlords were threatening eviction. The Irish nationalist leader, Charles Parnell proclaimed that any landlord who evicted tenants should be ostracised by the community. The words were taken seriously by the majority of landlords but were ignored by the English land agent of the Earl of Erne in County Mayo, Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832–1897), Boycott evicted tenants who could not pay and faced a ‘boycott’ from the local community. Shops refused to supply him, his servants left, the mail was undelivered and Captain Boycott found himself alone. He soon gave up and returned to England. He died in his home village of Burgh St Peter, Norfolk and is buried in the church where his father had been the rector. St Mary the Virgin, Staithe Road, Burgh St Peter, Norfolk, NR34 0BT.

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