The Success of Low-Salience Terms
447Historically, eponymic terms quite simply meant “the (disease, sign,
test) described by X [in a recent publication]”. Over time, some were
replaced with more meaningful lexical elements in a variety of ways:
Besnier-Boeck-Schaumann disease is now known as sarcoidosis,
profiling the presence of certain abnormal lesions (sarcoids) in the
lungs of sarcoidosis patients
Hodgkin’s disease has become Hodgkin’s lymphoma, where the
headword more precisely points to a particular type of neoplasm
rather than merely a morbid condition
Prinzmetal angina is losing ground to vasospastic angina, which
states that the source of heart-related symptoms (angina)
experienced by patients is a spasm of blood vessels.In the case of those eponyms that have survived, complexity
(multiplicity of salient features) of the underlying concept has probably
played a role in their success, but another reason would be their precision.
This motivation appears controversial—after all, much of the criticism
towards eponymic terms is based on the claim that they are uninformative.
However, their informative weakness can be regarded as their strength as
their users need to memorise the entire definition and thus the underlying
concept paradoxically becomes even more precise than one assigned to an
analytical term. This view has been expressed by Gilreath (1995: 34) and
Sager (1990), who wrote that “eponymic terms (...) have the advantage of
unique differentiation but lack systematic import” (Sager 1990:77).^4
A term can be uniquely differentiated among other terms if it is
pronounced differently. Thus, the proper-name element of an eponymic
term apparently serves to provide phonetic material that is—generally—
readily distinguishable from other similar terms and is—generally again—
quite easy to pronounce, unlike some unmotivated neologisms, usually
representing a tried-and-tested family name (at least in the language where
it originated). This may be the reason behind the popularity of the term
duct of Wirsung in ultrasonography reports. An analytical synonym exists
(pancreatic duct), but some people have two pancreatic ducts and duct of
Wirsung refers specifically to the main duct, which is always present. The
eponymic term may have also been chosen because of its brevity. In a
corpus that includes 42 reports of computed tomography and ultrasound
(^4) Duque Parra et al. (2006: 220) bring out one more strength of eponyms when
they state that “they convey no preconceived notions as to the nature of an
abnormality”.