A Brief History
On February 11, 2001, the “Anna Kournikova Virus” was set loose by a Dutch computer troll, infecting the email of millions of users with a joke image of the eponymous tennis player along with a not so funny virus infecting their computers.
Digging Deeper
Anna, of course, had nothing to do with the computer plague that bears her name, and today we look at a few other unfortunately named items.
Firstly, any disease or bad medical condition. Examples would be Parkinson’s, Graves’, Alzheimer’s, Hodgkin’s, Crohn’s, or Down Syndrome.
Sadism and Masochism are also both named after people!
Spoonerisms are messed up pronunciations named after Reverend Spooner.
Judas, Quisling, and Benedict Arnold all gave their names as metaphors for “traitor.”
Finally, the Napoleonic Complex, also called “short man syndrome,” is based on the myth that M. Bonaparte was far shorter than average, when he was really of average height.
Question for students (and subscribers): What other examples can you think of? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Markham, J. David and Matthew Zarzeczny. Simply Napoleon. Simply Charly, 2017.
Mawrence, Amanda. Anna Kournikova. Carlton Books, 2001.
The featured image in this article, Fanny Pistor and Sacher-Masoch, is in the public domain because its copyright has expired and its author is anonymous.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
