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: F

Ferris wheel The original Ferris Wheel opened to the public in 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The directors of the event intended it to rival to Eiffel Tower built in 1899. The engineer who constructed it was George Washington Gale Ferris Jnr. (1859–1896) from Galesburg, Illinois. It had 36 cars each of which could carry 40 passengers. In 1904 the wheel was shipped to St. Louis for the 1904 exhibition. Ferris went on to found a bridge building company in Pittsburgh. He died in 1896 of typhoid fever. Fox’s Glacier mints The company was founded in the late nineteenth century in Leicester by Walter Richard Fox, who devised confectionary lines with names like ‘Cupid Flavour’, ‘What Ho’ and ‘Ocean Wave’. The glacier mint was the creation of his son Eric Fox who advertised the product with a polar bear standing on an ice floe (not actually a glacier). The company used a stuffed polar bear, named Peppy, short for peppermint, for advertising, displaying it at football matches and other occasions. Peppy now appears on the wrappers standing on a glacier mint. Peppy still exists and is occasionally exhibited at Leicester Museum. frankfurter (hot dog) The frankfurter is a sausage which came from Frankfurt, Germany. During World War I, American soldiers named it the ‘victory steak’, and when they took it back home, it became the ‘hot dog’. The first person to heat the roll and add mustard and relish was Harry Stevens, concessionaire at baseball games played at the Polo Grounds, New York. After that the hot dog has become America's basic comestible at a baseball game. Laurence J. Peter said of the frankfurter ‘The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog. It feeds the hand that bites it.’ frisbee The original Frisbees were pie tins. The drivers of the Frisbie Pie Company used to beguile their lunch breaks tossing about the lightweight pie plates. This pastime caught hold at Yale University and later, about 1950, Fred Morison started to manufacture plastic discs on a large scale. He named his product for the pie company. The owner of the pie company was William Russell Frisbie of Bridgeport, Connecticut. fuchsia The fuschia is an ornamental semi-tropical shrub noted for its red or purple berries. They thrive well in damp climates. They originate from South America and were brought to Europe by Leonhard Fuchs (1501–1566), a professor of medicine at the University of Tübingen. Fuchs was looking for plants with medicinal properties. Sadly he found none in the fuchsia.

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