"Upset" & other nomenological phenomena

[Michael Quinion]

{HYPERLINK "/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0211c&L=ads-l&D=1&P=7269"}A. Maberry wrote:

> Years ago we kept a list of authors and the titles of their books
> e.g., Fish, Marie Poland, 1932- Contributions to the natural
> history of the Burbot, Lota maculosa (Lesueur) [a type of
> fish--ed.] We called such phenomena "appronyms."

New Scientist magazine in the UK ran a series of articles in its
Feedback column on this phenomenom, ending about five years ago. It
called it "nominative determinism". One column (22 June 1996) says:
"Chris Aspen takes issue with our name for the phenomenon. We have
noted already (20 April) that Carl Jung approvingly followed the
psychologist Wilhelm Stekel in calling it 'the compulsion of the
name'. But Aspen insists that the American writer Franklin P. Adams
got it right when he coined the word 'aptronym'".


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>