The name Ted has its own fun story. Most famously, President Theodore Roosevelt, who was all for forests, avoiding fights and still getting all the fish, got a bear toy fashioned out of his likeness, which was then baptized by early capitalism as “Teddy”. This is called an eponym; or “named upon”, usually a place, person or thing. That’s why an age can be Elizabethan, Orwellian, and if you’re really feeling the pretentiousness, Ultronic. There are companies named after the founders’ names, and random scientific constants, consistently and suspiciously named after German scientists.
Not just nouns, you can be queer enough to spawn an entire characteristic to be named upon you. If you are idealistic to the point of impracticality, you can call yourself Will McAvoy. Or settle for “quixotic” like others, after Don Quixote de la Mancha. You can also misuse this to make up fun inside jokes about your friends just be wary of friends like Britta britta’ing the use of “Britta’d”.
It’s rather surprising when you actually take a step back to see the sheer number of words which are eponymous; sometimes really just some terms which our ancestors used to make fun of their contemporaries. Sideburns was an American general who had burns of facial hair on his sides; dunce was named after a Saint whose rivals took a revenge on him; and what about kids named Jazz, and Carlos and Karen?
Having said that, as fun as it is being objectified, one really needs to ask, as is with every other way of gaining immortality: “is it really worth it?”
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