But it hasn’t always been like that. In the Middle Ages, people only had first names. In the 1300s, last names were added to distinguish between people who had the same first name. Middle names came along sometime in the 1600s.

Let’s talk about last names. There are several ways that last names are created: 1) come from a place or a landmark (Van der Water = from the water, Bridge, Wood, Hamilton – a place, Washington – a place); 2) come from an occupation (Smith, Walker, Baker, Knight); 3) describe a family relationship (Johnson, Robertson, Molson – from Molly, Madison – from Maud, MacDonald – Mac = son); 4) nicknames based on personality or appearance (Short, Brown, Black, Long).

There are many many ways to classify first names. Some are descriptive (Margaret = pearl), some relate to place names (Francis = Frenchman), some are just invented (Wendy from Peter Pan), some are religious (Gabriel), some come from plants (Lily), some used to be last names (Douglas), and some are just random (Apple? Kal-el? Kyd? Ocean? Blanket?Jermajesty? Click here for more strange celebrities’ children’s names).

The last time my name (Margaret) was in the top ten names (by decade) was in the 1930s (#8). It was actually #3 in the 1890s and 1900s. You can find out the top names by decade at the Social Security website, found HERE.

How did your name do? Do you like your name? What’s your favorite name?

Eponyms are actually all over our language. Did you know the Pavlova (a meringue dessert) was named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1885-1931)?

The volt (the unit of electromotive force) was named after the Italian physicist Allessandro Volta (1745-1827). He invented the electric battery.

Nicotine (the drug in tobacco) was named after Jean Nicot (1530-1600), a French intellectual who first brought tobacco to France.

The magnolia genus (a type of shrub or tree) is from Pierre Magnol (1638-1715), a botanist from France who came up with a system of taxonomy.

The cardigan (a sweater with buttons) was first coined during the Crimean War when soldiers wore them to keep warm. It was named after an English officer who happened to be the seventh Earl of Cardigan (James Thomas Brudenell, 1797-1868).

A more common one is the teddy bear: it was named after president Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), who was nicknamed Teddy. One time while he was bear-hunting he left a bear cub unhurt, which led to a comic, which led to this eponym.

Some eponyms are obvious (Disneyland or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), while others are more subtle (adidas). Here are some more eponyms that come from people’s names: guillotine, Graham crackers, Dewey Decimal System, diesel, Mount Everest, guppy, lutz, lynching, narcissism, pasteurization, shrapnel, and zamboni (the thing that makes ice smooth).

We have eponyms from famous fictional characters: “keeping up with the Joneses” (comic strip characters, 1913), herculean (Hercules), and quixotic (Don Quixote de la Mancha).

We can have eponymous places, too: bourbon (Bourbon County, Kentucky), copper (Cyprus), jeans (Genoa, Italy), labrador (Labrador, China), pheasant (Phasis, Georgia), pistol (Pistoia, Italy), suede (Sweden), and tuxedo (Tuxedo Park Country Club, New York) are all eponyms based on locations.

[Some of these examples come from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal. It's the best linguistic reference book that I own.]

One benefit of the many words that Shakespeare coined is that we can make better distinctions between meanings. For example, fantastical for Shakespeare meant something more along the lines of imagined.  Today’s meaning has positive connotations, and couldn’t be used to describe a murder, unlike “…My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical…” (1.3.138, Macbeth.)

Last time I mentioned that Shakespeare might have wanted to create language to fit his iambic pentameter style of writing. One way he did this was with “what say you” and “what do you say.”  (Twelfth Night, 4.2.89; 4.3.31)  One has an extra syllable, but they have the same meaning.  Another device that he also used was making contractions.  Ne’er instead of never, o’er instead of over, are examples.  It could have easily been a way for Shakespeare to fix up a line and give it the right rhythm and length.

However, the main reason that Shakespeare used so many words was to reach a broad audience.  His viewers ranged from peasants to royalty.  The variations of language that he put forth encompassed many different social classes.  He created his characters through the language.  He could turn a character into someone vulgar simply through their vocabulary, and his audience would recognize these traits as soon as the words left the players’ mouths.  One such vulgar word was now-a-days (used by the grave-digger in Hamlet). Although this is not one of his additions to our language, it is still a prime example of how he used vocabulary (both in use at the time and new words that he coined) to shape his characters.

There are many ways that Shakespeare created his new words.  He went to school until the age of 14.  In his writing we can see that he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the school systems at the time; his general references to education tell us that.  Instead, he found “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks.”  (As You Like It, 2.1.18)  As a boy, he was more interested in nature.  It is probable that he worked as a lawyer’s clerk or a page, because he was very well acquainted with courtly speech.  He may also have worked as a schoolmaster himself, which could explain his use of Latin to create new words, his knowledge of other languages, and his amazing rhetoric.

His words came largely from manipulation of the current language.  He was able to switch words from one part of speech to another part.  He turned adjectives into adverbs.  He made adjectives into nouns.  For example, “…a sudden pale…usurps her cheek…”  (Venus and Adonis).  Other examples are “…say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true…” (Measure for Measure, 2.4.1283).  He made adjectives and nouns into verbs (to fault, to force).  For example, “…which happies those that pay the willing loan…” (Sonnet IV, line 6.)  And, lastly, he made verbs into nouns.  An example is “…recounts what horrid sights seen by the watch…” (Julius Caesar, 2.2.16.)  The watch is used to mean watchmen.

Shakespeare was a master not only of words, but of language. His influence on the English language was monumental and he is still one of the most iconic literary figures of all time.

This concludes Part 2 of my series on Shakespeare. There will be more to come!

If you missed Part 1, click here.

Remember how the word “pea” came from the mass noun “pease“? This is a perfect example of back-formation. Even though the “s” at the end of pease did not actually mean plural, once this word got to English, the English speakers changed it. In English, having an -s at the end of a word makes us think it’s a plural; thus pea became the singular form. Sometimes when words are borrowed between languages, the original features of the word (like a suffix of -s) take on new meanings in the new language.

It’s usually hard to tell if a word is a back-formation just from looking at it. You might think that the word “donation” comes from the verb “donate“, but it’s actually the other way around. Donation was the original noun. Donate was back-formed from it.

Two more examples of back-formation are grovel (by Shakespeare) and sidle.  There is a pattern in English of how to form a gerund.  You add -ing to the base of a verb.  The adverbial ending -ling sounds very similar and is sometimes indistinguishable from -ing when it’s attached to a word.  Originally in English we only had the word groveling, and it was an adverb. Shakespeare probably thought that groveling was the gerund form of the verb grovel and decided to use grovel as a verb.  (Or, he knew that it was an adverb and figured it would make a nice verb anyway.)

The same thing goes for the creation of the word sidle from sideling (and/or?) sidelong.  Someone heard side-ling and broke it in the wrong place: sidel-ing.  Sidel’s spelling changed to sidle, and we were given a brand new verb via back-formation.

Some more examples of back-formation (found on Wikipedia)…

• babysit from babysitter (a verb from a noun)
• edit from editor (a verb from a noun)
• syringe from syringes (a singular form from a plural)
• euthanase/euthanize from euthanasia (a verb from a noun)
• enthuse from enthusiasm (a verb from a noun)
• resurrect from resurrection (a verb from a noun)
• sleaze from sleazy (a noun from an adjective)

Often back-formations start out colloquial and still sound strange for a while before they become commonly known words. Enthuse is still not universally accepted as a proper word.

In a sort of meta-recursiveness, the verb back-form (referring to the action of back-formation) is actually a back-formation itself. It comes from the noun back-formation. How’s that for confusing?

The word back-formation was coined in 1897 by James Murray, the founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. (This fact via About.com.)

If you want to charge someone with a crime, there’s a word for it: you accuse them.  If you want to give a winning athlete a title, there’s a term for it: you call them a champion.  If you’re in a rush, you hurry.  If something’s grand and wonderful, it’s majestic.  If you’re sick you might puke; if you’re arrogant, you might swagger.  And, if Shakespeare hadn’t been a playwright, we wouldn’t have all those very useful words.  William Shakespeare introduced nearly 2,000 words to our language, hundreds of phrases, and new styles of writing.  This assertion is not baseless.  English owes a great debt to this monumental figure.

Every single italicized word in the previous paragraph was coined by Shakespeare… or at least first recorded by him.

In Shakespeare’s time, there was an explosion of words being created.  Some scholars put the total that have actually survived at around 12,000.  These words came mostly from Latin, and while they didn’t necessarily fill gaps where we had no word to describe something, they created many synonyms.  Over time, the words changed meaning to some degree so now we are better able to make slight distinctions that we were otherwise unable to make before.  The way most of these new words came into use was through written works: one major example is Shakespeare’s plays.  Other examples are the dictionaries of the time (i.e. A Table Alphabeticall of hard usual English words, by Robert Cawdrey).

Some reasons that Shakespeare created so many new words were:

• he didn’t have a word that would fit exactly what he wanted to say, and
• he had a word, but it didn’t fit in iambic pentameter (a type of meter of poetry).

When someone writes thousands of lines in this demanding style, audiences are willing to give the writer a break when he has to come up with some new words.  One usage that gives this impression is the introduction of “I have got” for “I have.”  This adds a syllable, but keeps the same meaning.  It could have easily been a way for Shakespeare to fix up a line and give it the right rhythm and length.

There is so much to write about with respect to Shakespeare and his many many gifts to the English language. More to come…

Have you ever made up a word to suit your needs? Did it catch on?

Update: Continue here with Part 2.