Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 11:40:19 EDT

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU

Subject: Re: names to nouns



I could have sworn there was a label for these, but when I checked my copy of

Joseph Williams's "Origins of the English Language", which features a nice

discussion of nouns derived from proper names (pp. 136-8), he calls them...yup,

nouns (or words) derived from proper names (names for places as well as people,

of course--sodomy and spartan and hamburger alongside watt and Machiavellian.

"Denominatives" doesn't work (even if we allowed for denominative nouns), be-

cause that doesn't single out PROPER names as sources.

Larry