Eponym

eponym, one for whom or which something is or is believed to be named. The word can refer, for example, to the usually mythical ancestor or totem animal or object that a social group (such as a tribe) holds to be the origin of its name. In its most familiar use, eponym denotes a person for whom a place or thing is named, as in describing James Monroe as the eponym of Monrovia, Liberia. The derivative adjective is eponymous. An eponymous hero of a work of literature is one whose name is the title of the work, such as Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey, Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, and John Fowles’s Daniel Martin.