Most liked posts in thread: Word of the Day : McKenzie

This week's theme:
Words not named after the person they should be.

Give credit where credit is due, goes the expression, but in this week's words the credit is misplaced. Each of these words is coined after the wrong person.

It's not always easy to assign credit, however, as the contention on the naming of diseases shows.

There's even a law about misplaced credits. Stigler's law of eponymy says, "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." Stigler credits this law to sociologist Robert K. Merton (thus making the law self-referential).

 

From the Online Etymology Dictionary

colloquial for "signature," 1903 (sometimes, through some unexplainable error, John Henry), from the Boston merchant and rebel (1736–1793), signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, from his signing that dangerous document first or most flamboyantly. The family name is attested from 1276 in Yorkshire.

 

I checked a lot of sources and that is the most plausible explanation.

According to legend, Hancock signed his name largely and clearly so that King George could read it without his spectacles, but this fanciful story did not appear until many years later.

From Snopes.com

The delegates to the Continental Congress did not sign the Declaration of Independence the day it was adopted, July 4, 1776, and thus there was no need for Hancock to spur them on by being the first to take that bold step. When Congress adjourned on July 4 after having debated the Declaration for three days and having voted to adopt the document with some revisions, Hancock ; as president of that body; was charged with authenticating the revised document and signing it so that copies could be printed and sent to the colonial legislatures for approval and distributed to the Continental Army. (These copies were not the same as the familiar document that is now on exhibit in the U.S. National archives; the first printed copies of the Declaration bore only the names of John Hancock and Charles Thomson.) Thus, when Hancock first put his name to a copy of the Declaration, he did so in an empty chamber; the only other person present was Charles Thomson, a Pennsylvanian who was serving as the secretary of Congress. It's unlikely Hancock would have spoken any of the defiant phrases attributed to him, as no one was there to hear his words but Thomson. Thomson himself never claimed Hancock said anything about "King George" or "John Bull" as he signed.