Names as verbs
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In a comment on yesterday's post "A 12th-century influencer", Laura Morland wrote:
Thanks for sharing "to abelard," the new verb of the month! Note to AP: the grammarians will insist that it be spelled with a lower-case "a". (Verbs are never capitalized, not even in German, I don't believe.)
This is one where The Errorist might have the upper hand.
The name most often verbed in English is probably MacGyver, and its verbal uses (almost?) always retain the capital letters. A few examples from the news:
[link] This PopSocket Will Help You MacGyver Your Way Out of a Pickle
[link] 5 Badass Female TV Characters In STEM (And An Instance They Have MacGyvered)
[link] Macgyvered Neck Brace Saves Rare Peruvian Grasshopper
[link] The Pinkbike Podcast: Fox's Gearbox, 'MacGyvering' Ultra Premium Bikes & Counting Chains
[link] ‘MacGyvering’ Inventorship – It’s Much More than a TV Trope
Merriam-Webster agrees; so does Wiktionary, though they give a lower-case version as an "alternate spelling". The OED as well:
And the BBC even wrote about it — "How'MacGyver' became a verb".
I didn't yet turn up a "grammarian" opinion on this, but I did find a scholarly paper on the history of the verbification process: Aurélie Héois, “When Proper Names Become Verbs: A Semantic Perspective“, Lexis 2020.
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Rodger C said,
June 12, 2025 @ 10:07 am
It out-Herods Herod. ("Out-herods" gets a red underline.)
Yuval said,
June 12, 2025 @ 11:49 am
But aren't those all titlecase?
Peter Taylor said,
June 12, 2025 @ 12:19 pm
My gut instinct is that to Google would be a stronger contender
Mark Liberman said,
June 12, 2025 @ 12:39 pm
@Peter Taylor: "My gut instinct is that to Google would be a stronger contender"
Good point. I was blinded by thinking only about verbification of personal names.
Jon W said,
June 12, 2025 @ 12:44 pm
No love for "boycott"?
Ernie in Berkeley said,
June 12, 2025 @ 1:02 pm
Gary Marcus is a cognitive psychologist and critic of LLMs. He posts in his Substack that somebody wrote "Apple just GaryMarcus'd LLM reasoning ability." Note the merger of the first and last names. Are there others with this pattern?
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/a-knockout-blow-for-llms
Cuconnacht said,
June 12, 2025 @ 2:18 pm
If an engine is dieseling, it is continuing to run after being turned off. Always with a lower-case d as far as I iknow.
Jonathan Smith said,
June 12, 2025 @ 3:29 pm
Amusing link from Ernie in which Marcus also coins "Subbarao (Rao) Kambhampati’d" (note spaces.)
Amusing parts (really relating to the cough hack "AJI" thread) being some commonsense talk about LLMs/LRMs and reference to (plus obligatory mockery of) the now-standard rebuttal: "but these systems are actually *more* human-like for their inability to solve simple problems PWND!"
Stephen Goranson said,
June 12, 2025 @ 3:57 pm
A related use.
Lyndon Johnson to William Westmoreland in 1966:
"I hope you don't pull a MacArthur on me,"
HS said,
June 12, 2025 @ 6:30 pm
As another example with a first and last name (though not merged together) there is Robert McNamara'd in the Paul Simon song title "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I was Robert McNamara'd into Submission". ("Philippic", though a noun rather than a verb, is of course similarly derived from a proper name.)
I wonder whether "Donald Trumped" will become an example in the future…
HS said,
June 12, 2025 @ 6:40 pm
A quick google search reveals, unsurprisingly, that "Donald Trumped" already exists.
Tom Duff. said,
June 12, 2025 @ 7:16 pm
Bowdlerize?
At Pixar my name is (or used to be) a verb or at least a participle. One of our bits of hardware had a Duffing RAM.
AntC said,
June 12, 2025 @ 7:20 pm
The name most often verbed in English is probably MacGyver, …
I beg to disagree. MacGyver is unheard of in Brit English, never mind getting verbed.
Heath Robinson is perhaps the closest comparison in Blighty. Does that get verbed? (Wiktionary informs it at least gets adjectivised.) Perhaps our correspondents there could comment? (And could the last one out leave some of his and Rowland Emett's contraptions running, whilst switching the lights off.)
DaveK said,
June 12, 2025 @ 8:06 pm
The rule in English seems to be that if a verbed name is a direct allusion to the person in question, it’s capitalized (like “to McGyver”) but when it’s become so common that the reference is obscure (who knows Capt. Boycott’s first name?) it gets lower cased.
Tom Ace said,
June 12, 2025 @ 8:49 pm
ブッシュする (bushu-suru), coined after Bush 41 urped on Japan's Prime Minister.
Stephen Goranson said,
June 12, 2025 @ 9:26 pm
Borking nominees had less success of late?
J.W. Brewer said,
June 12, 2025 @ 9:51 pm
I think English verbs derived from toponyms that are (as "proper nouns") conventionally capitalized are likewise conventionally capitalized. "To Americanize" would be a long-standing example. Here's a more recent one: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Californicate
Although lower-case vulcanize from capitalized-divinity Vulcan is an example pointing the other way and I don't think the god is as obscure as Cap't Boycott.
Stig Johan said,
June 13, 2025 @ 4:59 am
Anyone who's watched the TV show Community would be familiar with "Britta" as a verb. As in, "you've Britta'd it!"