Eponymous

You might reasonably conclude that someone created the dumpster. After all, it's not found in nature, so someone had to first come up with the idea of creating large steel bins to hold garbage of all kinds, that can be hoisted in the air, be made to tilt their lids, and dump the contents into a garbage truck. The heavy lifting is mechanical. All you have to do is drop the stuff in the dumpster. Gravity takes over in filling it, and gravity takes over in emptying it. Einstein might have been impressed.

Uncle Albert was certainly alive in the 1930s when the Dempster brothers first came up with the idea of a heavy duty commercial trash receptacle, now known as a dumpster. The patented it as well. Imagine that, your family name is forever linked to garbage, It can be a dream come true for some.

I learned all this when I was reading the weekly column in the WSJ that gives us the origin of phrases, or words that have become hot ones, repeated often by all forms of the media in the preceding week. The column, 'Word on the Street' by Ben Zimmer was giving the reader the origin and the meaning of 'dumpster fire.' Apparently, President Trump, who has done more for the media just by waking up and talking or Tweeting than anyone before him, ran a 2016 campaign that the media has characterized as chaotic, or a 'dumpster fire.' Agree or not, the theme of the column is to describe where the word dumpster comes from, and what does a 'dumpster fire' mean?

For me, the revelation that a family's name is the origin for 'dumpster' is enough to get me going and add to my list of eponymous names.

Take the Outerbridge Crossing. Is it called that because the bridge was placed in a remote area, linking New Jersey and New York's Staten Island? You might well thing so. But in reality it is named after Eugenius H. Outerbridge, the Port Authority's first chairman. The Port Authority, being a bistate agency that builds and maintains bridges, as well as running the region's three major airports.

The Holland Tunnel, that links Manhattan and New Jersey? 'Holland' because the Dutch settled in New York in the 1600s and bought Manhattan from the Indians for a song? No. The tunnel is named after its chief engineer, Clifford Milburn Holland.

Frozen peas? Frozen carrots? Birds Eye frozen peas? Bird Eye frozen carrots? Clarence Frank Birdseye II is considered the father of fast frozen food, creating an entire industry that freezes fresh food for later consumption without losing the quality of freshness.

Recoating your driveway? Applying a coat of fresh McAdam? McAdam is named after a Scottish inventor who perfected paving roads with a layer of tar-coated rock and gravel.

Arm trouble? Having Tommy John surgery? The surgeon who advanced the surgery that repaired the UCL, the ulnar collateral ligament, found in the elbow that gets strained by a high count of pitches thrown, is named Tommy John, right? No. The first major league ballplayer to undergo the surgery advanced by the orthopedic surgeon Frank Lobe was Tommy John, a Los Angeles pitcher who after the 1974 surgery went on to win 164 more games from the 124 he had already won prior to the surgery. The surgery was an obvious success. UCL repair is now known as 'Tommy John' surgery. Think of being known in baseball annals, as well as in medical journals.

While law firms might not be considered truly eponymously named, they do carry the names of partners who are no longer associated with the firm. Thomas Dewy, rackets-busting Manhattan District Attorney and presidential candidate who lost to Harry Truman in the 1948 election, became part of the name of one of the biggest white shoe firms, Dewey Ballantine.

Crime families in New York seem to keep the leader's name, long after they are in jail or dead. Take the Genovese crime family, whose name comes from a boss named Vito Genovese. Vito is no longer with us, having died of a heart attack in 1969 while serving time in a Federal prison in Springfield, Missouri. The family named endured, even after the leader was John Gotti, who himself also died in the same prison in 2002, of throat cancer. Even after that, the Genovese name still endures even after its leader is said to be Frank Cali, who succeeded John Gotti.

The law firm Dewey Ballantine, as prestigious as it was, merged with another law firm, Le Boeuf and became Dewy LeBoeuf, which later went into bankruptcy and later completely dissolved when three of its former senior attorneys were tried for conspiring to manipulate financial records. So far, there's been one mistrial.

So, how permanent is a name? So far, pretty good when it involves garbage bins, a bridge, a tunnel, frozen food, paving material, a surgical procedure and organized crime. Not so much if you're part of a law firm.

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