"Boolean or" or "boolean or"?

I was writing the text for some new error messages for the expression tree library the other day. When I ran them past our user education specialists (that is, the people who will be writing the documentation to explain the error messages), one of them pointed out that “Boolean” is an eponym -- a word named after a person -- and therefore should be capitalized.

And indeed, she was correct. Boolean logic is named after its inventor, George Boole (1815-1864).

That got me thinking, which often leads to trouble.

English writers do not usually capitalize the eponyms “shrapnel” (Henry Shrapnel, 1761-1842), “diesel” (Rudolf Diesel, 1858-1913), “saxophone” (Adolphe Sax, 1814-1894), “baud” (Emile Baudot, 1845-1903), “ampere” (Andre Ampere, 1775-1836), “chauvinist” (Nicolas Chauvin, 1790-?), “nicotine” (Jean Nicot, 1530-1600) or “teddy bear” (Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1916).

However, we do capitalize “Darwinian evolution”, “Victorian morality”, “Elizabethan plays”, “Dickensian stories”, “Machiavellian politicians” and “Orwellian surveillance”, so perhaps we should capitalize “Boolean logic”.

I think the actual guideline to follow here is that we capitalize eponyms only if they are adjectives. Once they become nouns, we quickly stop capitalizing them.

Of course, that then doesn’t explain why we do not capitalize “caesarian section” or “draconian measures”. Expecting that much consistency from English is asking rather too much.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  There's also the approach that suggests this logic be followed only when deciding in the absense of established custom.  What do other exceptions (if any) and documentation (if any) state?  As a company, has Microsoft established any guideline (eg, does FxCop enforce one)?  The industry? I've seen a fair mix, no doubt due to people sometimes realizing the history of the word, and sometimes not.  I'm not sure the people who use it as uncapitalized jargon care too greatly one way or the other, but people like myself would sure like consistency.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  I think you're mistaken here.  It's based on a longstanding mathematical tradition.  To express the deepest honor for a mathematician, you use lowercase adjectives derived from their name.  See the section "A note on typography" at the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_group.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  I was about to correct you that "ampere", lowercase, is simply incorrect.  However, upon looking for a reference to that effect, I found http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter5/5-2.html.  Apparently, the international organization responsible for the SI system says you should write unit names with an initial lowercase letter.  (Note that this does not apply to the second word of multi-word unit name, so degrees Celsius.) In other words, it turns out that "Ampere" with a capital is simply incorrect.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  Re "caesarian section". It is not named after Julius Caesar or any other member of Caesar family. Most likely it was named after a caesar -- word that became the title of the roman ruler. Re “draconian measures”. Most people perceive this as being "measures of a dragon" not derived from a given name. So the rule is pretty clear actually. If a name is used as an adjective and the meaning of the adjective is "of this person" [logic of Bool, age (and morality) of Victoria etc.] then it should be capitalized.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  Excepting Machiavelli (who isn't to be trusted) the rule is clear: capitalize the English.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  !dragons, Marvin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  I think the word gets to go lowercase once the word itself has become more popular than its maker. I vote for lowercase boolean even though I use VB.NET and not usually C#.

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 10, 2006
  Capitalization should always be used for this type of eponym that is actually a reference to a person.  Boolean logic is the logic of George Boole.  This might be clearer if we called it Boole’s logic, but the principle is the same:  George himself is being mentioned so it should be capitalized.  By contrast, an ampere is not Ampere’s unit of current, it is a unit named after the eponymous Ampere. Personally, I take exception to the accepted usage.  I think an attribution like Boolean should not be called an eponym like ampere.

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2006
  Eric wrote: > English writers do not usually capitalize the eponyms “salmonella” (Daniel Salmon... One minor nitpick-- "Salmonella" is usually, and should be, capitalized because it is a genus name, and all genera in binomial "Genus species" descriptions are capitalized.  I am having trouble finding many references, other than your blog post, where Salmonella is not correctly capitalized.

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 10, 2007
  Christopher Bruns is correct; I have removed the error.  Thanks!

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2007
  Welcome to the eighteenth issue of Community Convergence. I'm Charlie Calvert, the C# Community PM, and

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2007
  Good blog entry, except that I've always been taught to capitalize "Caesarean section".

• Anonymous
  October 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 27, 2011
  The name "caesarean section" is derived from the word caedo, I believe, meaning "to cut".