Vol. 5/2009 - Facultatea de Litere

1.2 Approaches to eponyms
The literature of speciality divides approaches to eponymisms into (a) those concerned
with practical perspectives and (b) those dealing with theoretical aspects.
The continually-growing number of English dictionaries of eponyms (over 45 titles
recorded in our corpus) indicates the necessity of a better understanding of these words, on
the one hand and the permanent renewal of the eponymism-including terminologies, on the
other hand. This impressive lexicographic eponymic heritage has drawn the attention of
linguists who have evolved in their attitude towards the study of eponymy and
eponymization.
Although eponymy is not associated with other types of relationships between words, as
it is the case with antonymy, synonymy or with hyponymy, it has been marginally
mentioned in some volumes dealing with English lexicology (Leviţchi 1970) and histories of
the English language (Wood 1969). These authors made no theoretical statement but, at least,
they discuss the transformation of proper nouns into common words. Other linguists have
shown some flexibility in matters of eponymy. Thus, eponym(ism)s were provided entries in
language encyclopedias (Crystal 1995) or in language companions (McArthur 1996). They
were described in full chapters in volumes dedicated to the study of words (Hellweg 1995,
Crystal 2007). Eponyms were approached from the perspective of the difficulties they may
produce in the translation process (Popescu 2006, Popescu 2007).
2. Materials and method
2.1 Eponyms in the mathematical terminology
This approach states that eponyms in the mathematical terminology have a considerable
frequency of occurrence and displays their possible division into ‘one-word’ or discreet
lexical units and ‘multi-word’ or well-established patterns.
As lexemes, mathematical eponymisms are quite rare, but as ‘set phrases’ or ‘never
changing patterns’, they are very frequent in the specialist discourse. The excerpt below
shows the use of eponyms not only to be a predominant feature of the mathematics text
(which is actually not true with reference to mathematical texts, in general) but also a
resourceful tool of coining a new terminology capable to emphasize the text and the
mathematical reference accuracy:
Let S be the standard Smith class of normalized univalent Matcuzinski functions on the unit
disc, and let B be the subclass of normalized Wahlquist functions. We establish a simple
criterion for the non-Wahlquistness of a Matcuzinski function. With this technique it is easy
to exhibit, using standard Hughes-Williams methods, a class of non-Wahlquist polynomials.
This answers the Kopfschmerzhaus-type problem, posed by R. J. W. Jones, concerning the
smallest degree of a non-Wahlquist polynomial. ( plambeck.org/archives/2005_08.html)
This excerpt consists of 74 words, out of which 18 are eponymic structures. It would be
improper to state that 25% of the terms in a mathematical text are eponym-based structures,
but, nevertheless, some branches of this science, in particular contexts, may show an even
higher percentage of such set phrases.
2.2 Materials and method
To reach the current study aim, one corpus was created after the scanning of different
sources of documentation: articles in mathematics journals/reviews (Hagiwara and Kurada
1998, Halanay and Ionescu 1993, Arlinski 2008), coursebooks and doctoral theses in
mathematics (Roda 2004), corpora of our previously published papers). The corpus
established, classification criteria were devised and synthesizing tables were drawn to create
the framework for discussion and conclusions.
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