a word or name, e.g. cardigan or Hodgkin's disease, derived from the name of a real or mythical person
a person after whom something is named or believed to be named
Greek epōnymos eponym, eponymous, from epi- + onyma name. Many hundreds of English words have been derived from the names of real people. Some, such as Heaviside layer and Hodgkin's disease, have fairly obviously been formed by this process; less obvious examples include bloomers, bowdlerize, boycott, cardigan, chauvinism, derby, dunce, gerrymander, guppy, leotard, loganberry, lynch, mackintosh, martinet, maverick, plimsoll, sadism, salmonella, sandwich, shrapnel, silhouette, thespian, and volt