Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Eponyms

The wikimedia foundation had a wonderfull offer of getting a database with eponyms. This is great and obviously once we have them, we want to include them in Ultimate Wiktionary as well.

Eponyms are however a funny thing; they are definetly related to words and not to their meaning. Actually this should be quite obvious because in German you have "Röntgenstrahlen" while in English it is called "x-ray". One is an eponym, while the other is not and they do share the same meaning.

Thinking about eponyms and how to include them in the database design let me see the light that I was really wrong about how I had etymologies in the data design. Like eponymys etymologies are word related and not meaning related; they too are language specific.

The funny bit is that many people have looked at it and nobody noticed. I think it is like with so many things, the best designs do not survive reality unscathed. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

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