Eponyms are words that come from someone’s name. “Flack” is an eponym because it came from Gene Flack. “Dickens”, as in the somewhat old fashioned “oh he’s just a little dickens,” is not an eponym; “dickens” was a synonym for “devil” a couple of centuries ago. But “boycott,” refusing to engage in commerce for some reason, is an eponym.
“Boycott” comes from Captain Charles Boycott. He was the estate manager for the Earl of Erne in the 1880s, and worked on the Earl’s estate in County Mayo, Ireland (the Earl himself stayed in England). In September 1880 the tenants and laborers on the estate demanded lower rent, so Boycott evicted all of them. After that, an organization called the Irish Land League organized both the evicted tenants and their neighbors and everyone in the vicinity refused to rent any of the Earl’s land (for farming), refused to do any work on the estate, and even refused to deliver mail there.
The organized effort was a success; by the end of the year Boycott the man resigned his job and returned to England, and boycott the word appeared right away. The first mention was in the November 1, 1880 edition of the Glasgow Herald, and in the December 9 London Times the same year. Apparently it was one of the protesters who came up with the idea of calling their action a “boycott.”
After that, “boycott” entered the language surprisingly fast; it was even adopted into French by 1881. Common usage spread at nearly social-media-meme speed. It’s stayed in English ever since — today everybody knows what a boycott is, but hardly anybody knows it comes from somebody’s name. Except, of course, for you.
