This site illustrates some of the Great Originals who gave their names to History.
Here are explanations for anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of many of the more puzzling words in the English language.

 

 

  Akimbo, Mwawalele. c.1780?-1813. Crown Prince of the West African state of Segu. When visiting London in the early 1800s he was taken up by fashionable society, his habit of standing with hands on hips and elbows out led to the term standing like Akimbo, later shortened to it's present form.

   Asphalt, Leopold von 1802-1880. German nobleman, born in Asphalt in Bavaria, who developed the roadmaking mixture of bitumen, pitch and sand to which his name is now commonly given. having paved all the roads on his estates, he set out to pave as much as possible of Bavaria.

   Avocado, Jorge-luis de 1789-1868. An explorer and botanist, born in Buenos Aires, he made the tropical pear shaped fruit familiar to European palates. He visited every continent in the world in the pursuit of unfamiliar vegetable and fruits and was on the point of giving his name to the Kiwi fruit when he was reminded that he had already given his name to the avocado.

   Awning, Edward 1826-1900. English sailor. During a cruise in the Indian Ocean in 1853, he was flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Brindsley. A party of visitors came aboard the flagship for luncheon when is became evident that the heat would be insufferable for the ladies. Lieutenant Awning caused the bosun’s work party to rig a canvas shelter over the quarterdeck to the relief of all. This innovation spread rapidly through the fleet and later was adopted for civilian use.

   Bigot, Nathaniel 1575-1660. Puritan preacher and activist born in Ipswich of Hugenot stock. From his early youth he displayed signs of an obstinate and intolerant zeal which was to characterize his life. An early adherent of the Puritan movement, he failed to obtain membership of any of its sects,which found his views too extreme.

   Binge, Sir Oswald 1678-1768. English country squire, born in Leicestershire, who became known for the scale and duration of his eating and drinking bouts. A feast might last for several days, the guests coming and going while Sir Oswald remained at the table, taking occasional cat-naps.

   Boater, Charles Edwin 1838-1903. Hatmaker, born in Whitechapel, London. In the early 1860s he introduced the flat-crowned straw hat, inspired by sailor’s headgear, that bears his name. Success did not come quickly, mainly because Boater started his sales among the deeply conservative London working class. Once it had been taken up by young public school boys is rapidly established itself. The vogue lasted until the 1920s and is still revived from time to time.

   Bogus, Harold, aka Charles Edward Stewart, aka George Bonaparte, aka Maximilian Sneed, etc. It is not known where or when Harold Bogus was born, or whether that was his real name. He is first recorded in Mississippi river-boats in the 1820s offering for sale a machine for converting cabbage leaves into bank notes. Frequently arrested he rarely spent more than a few hours in gaol having bought his way out with a bundle of what proved to be counterfeit bills, He was last sighted in 1862 posing as Papal Nuncio to the government of the Confederacy under the name of Balthazar de Castiglione.

   Botch, Jeremy c.1770-1834. English jobbing carpenter and bricklayer, notorious for the unreliable character of his work. He was employed briefly on the construction of the Brighton Pavilion where the phrase ‘a botch job’ first became current. He was dismissed when a chinois screen he had made fell on the heads of the Prince Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert. He spent the rest of his life wandering around the British Isles in rearch of places his reputation had not yet reached. It has been suggested that the phrase ‘jerry-built’ may also derive from his name and reputation.

   Bollard,Frederick 1798-1876. English sailor born in Portsmouth. After an unremarkable career, he was serving there as a captain on half pay when he began to notice how much damage was done to ships by the then practice of tying up to any convenient object on the quayside. In 1842 he began a campaign of letter writing to the Admiralty and the press which resulted in an Act of Parliament of 1844 requiring the provision of wooden, or preferably iron posts at fixed intervals in all Her Majesty's Naval Dockyards and ordering that Her Majesty's ships should thenceforth be secured to them and not to 'trees, coal merchants' carts or willing urchins, as heretofore'. Three years later the Navy Board noted that the cost of repairs had gone down by 17%. Captain Bollard was voted a pension of £140 per annum and retired soon after to the Isle of Wight, where he spent the remainder of a blameless and uneventful life.

   Boudoir, Emmeline 1863-1937. Born Emmeline Leboeuf to a humble peasant family in the Perigord region of France and a remarkable beauty, she went to Paris in her teens, married the financier Georges Boudoir, thirty years older than herself, and became a leading figure in the Parisian demi-monde. Her custom of entertaining friends, both male and female, in a small private sitting room, was the cause of her giving her name to the French, and later the English, language.

   Boycott, Charles Cunningham 1832-1897.Born at  Burgh St. Peter, Norfolk. Retired British army captain who was an estate manager in Ireland during the agitation over the Irish land question. After retiring from the army in 1873 he became agent for the Earl of Erne's estates in County Mayo. The Land League, formed in Ireland in 1879 when bad harvests made a famine likely told Boycott in 1880 that he must reduce rents by 25 per cent. After  Boycott attempted to serve writs of eviction, Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish Nationalist statesman, urged that without violence the tenants should avoid communication with those who refused their demand for lower rents. Parnell's policy was first used against Boycott who was forced to employ workers from Ulster, guarded by soldiers, to harvest his crops. He left Ireland the same year and eventually became an agent for estates in Suffolk.

   Buffet, Pierre-Alphonse 1692-1756. French gentleman -gambler, born in Paris, who introduced the custom of having food laid on a side-board for guests to serve themselves as and when they wished. In one version of his story he wasa obliged to sell his dinner table during a run of bad luck, in another he simply gave it away after deciding that time spent at a table was time denied to his beloved cards. Whatever the explanation 'Buffet suppers' became the rage among loose-living people in his native Paris, and soon after in London and elsewhere.

   Bugle, Hereward 1880-1934. A former military bandsman who served with Baden-Powell at the siege of Mafeking, he developed the instrument which bears his name in his spare time while working as a chartered surveyor in Birmingham. In later life he was much involved in the burgeoning brass band movement in the Midlands and North of England. He was a considerable virtuoso on all wind instruments.

   Cami,Vittorio 1859-14. Italian couturier, born in Turin. He opened his first salon in Milan in 1883 and moved to Paris in 1886. His clothes made on voluptuous lines and employing expensive fabrics, enjoyed a brief vogue, but he is nowadays remembered only for the one-piece female undergarment he invented. Increasingly interested in lingerie in his middle years, he was constantly on the look-out for new models. He committed suicide in 1914.

   Carburetto,Emilio 1845-1917. This famous Italian inventor was born in Spoleto and studied at the University of Bologna. Trained as an engineer, he was one of the founding members of the Touring Club of Italy, which awarded him its Supreme Grand Cross in 1900 for his 'inestimable contribution to the developement of the motorcar'. A reserve officer in the Bersaglieri, he was killed while directing ambulance services at the battle of Caporettto.

   Carousel, Leonid 1790-1845. Equstrian, showman and inventor, of mixed Russian and French parentage, born in Paris where his father was in the Imperial Russian consular service. He himself volunteered for service in one of Napoleon's hussar regiments during the Emperor's last Hundred Days, after which he emigrated to the United States. There he briefly studied engineering before joining a travelling show as equestian acrobat and mechanic. The first example of his steam-driven merry-go-round appeared in Wyoming in 1843. He died after being trampled by a circus eliphant in Des Moines, Iowa.

   Cartel, Edmond 1822-1891 and Georges 1825-1900. French financiers born in Rennes. Having made a fortune in grain speculation in the 1850s they moved to Paris and began the practice of encouraging firms to combine in order to maintain prices which bears their unsavoury name. Finding the Paris Bourse too restrictive they transferred their activities to New York and Chicago, where they quadrupled their capital dealing mainly in pork futures and railroad stocks. Legislation in the 1870s clipped their wings somewhat, and they ended their days as pig-breeders in Alsace.

    Celsius, Anders 1701-1744. Born in Uppsala, Sweden. Celsius invented the thermometer scale (often called the centigrade scale) which bears his name. He was professor of astronomy at the University of Upsala and in 1740 built the Uppsala Observatory. It was in 1742 that he described his thermometer in a paper read before the Swedish Acadamy of Sciences.

   Chassis, Benoit de 1827-1899. This important pioneer in the history of motoring was born into a family of wealthy landowners near Aix-en-Provemce, and, given the fundamental nature of his contribution, it is remarkable that he was entirely self-taught, claiming that he was educated by the local blacksmith. Enthusiasm for all aspects of early motoring dissipated his inheritance. An attempt to recoup his fortune by setting up a combined milk-float and passenger service merely left him deeper in debt, and he would have been bankrupted had he not ended his life in a fatal crash while racing at Deauville.

   Coffin, Matthew c. 1480-1540. English carpenter, born in London. He developed the wooden 'Coffin box' while working for the monks of Blackfriars, and when they rejected it on theological grounds, preferring the traditional stone article, he went into business on his own account and did a lively trade among the tradesmen of Southwark and the City. It is interesting that in a transitional period of English art and design he offered his customers the choice of 'Gothic' or 'Italian' styles. He was Lord Mayor of London 1531-33.

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