Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 11:40:19 EDT From: Larry Horn 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