Vol. 5/2009 - Facultatea de Litere

Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views ISSN 2065-3514
(2009) Year II, Issue 5
Galaţi University Press
Editors: Elena Croitoru & Floriana Popescu
Proceedings of the 4th Conference Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views
8-9 October 2009, “Dunărea de Jos” University, Galaţi, ROMÂNIA
pp. 106-111
AN APPROACH TO EPONYMS IN MATHEMATICS
Floriana POPESCU
Introduction
The background to this study lies in the field of word formation, with a particular insight
into the structure of mathematical set phrases which include personal names. Aim of the
study: basing our argument on the hypothesis that eponymization has been highly
productive in the general English vocabulary, we scrutinize the phenomenon from its
structural perspectives. Materials and methods: the paper provides an epistemology of
mathematical eponyms by describing various eponym-including terms useful in the
scientific terminology, in general and in the mathematical terminology, in particular. Results:
whilst numerous eponymous elements are shared by most of the scientific terminologies
(medicine, economics, physics, chemistry and mathematics), a considerable number of such
structures are used in mathematics exclusively. Over 320 eponymists have been recorded to
have their names included in ‘set phrases’ related to the mathematical terminology which
means that at least an equal number of linguistic patterns may provide investigation and
analysis material. For practical purposes only a few such formations were selected and they
will be used to account for a wide diversity of personal names associated with common
words. Nevertheless, mathematical eponyms present structures which are characteristic to
the mathematical jargon only. Conclusion: the paper advocates not only the presence but
also the structural abundance of eponymisms in the specialist terminology of mathematics.
1. Aim of the study
1.1 Terminological issues
In the attempt to clearly state the senses of the term eponym, in the mid-1990s, McArthur
(1996: 350) assigned three different meanings to this word. Nearly a decade later, the
metalanguage had already been enriched with new terms. Many of them have been adopted
herein to distinguish each of the meanings referred to by McArthur, and our terminological
parallelisms are as follows: the term eponym is used for (a) “a personal name from which a
word has been derived” has been preserved in metalanguage. Its second meaning, “the
person whose name is so used” was replaced by eponymist, a term with a double meaning,
i.e., to refer to the person from whom the term is derived or to those linguists interested in
the study of eponymy. Finally, the third “the word so derived” has been replaced by the
more accurate derived form eponymism). In addition to that, it is worth including here
eponymophilia (Matteson and Woywodt 2006: 45), a term advanced by doctors studying the
medical nomenclature heavily indebted to personal names, who thus profess their linguistic
‘disease’ and which was advanced to point not to a diagnosis but rather to a hobby.
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