My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

Is it common or proper?
Lots of words have come into English because of the man (with the honourable
exception  of  Mrs  Amelia  Bloomer,  it  is  usually  a  man)  who  invented  or
popularized  the  item  concerned.  At  some  stage  in  the  evolution  of  all  these
words, they would have been proper nouns, and thus spelled with a capital, but
as  the  word  became  more  commonplace  and  the  association  with  a  person  was
forgotten, the capital tended to be abandoned, too.
The only two of this list that merit a capital in the dictionaries are those whose
inventors lived into the twentieth century. We give them ten years.
Biro
László József Bíró (1899–1985), Hungarian inventor of the
ballpoint pen.
boycott
Captain Charles C. Boycott, Irish land agent ostracized by his
neighbours in 1880.
cardigan
The 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797–1868), after whom the
garment is named. He was clearly a fashion icon of his day.
dunce
The blessed John Duns Scotus (died 1308), one of the most

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important theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages,
later accused of unsound reasoning. And presumably made to
stand in a corner wearing a pointy hat.
Hoover
W. H. ‘Boss’ Hoover (1849–1932). American businessman
who first patented (but did not invent) the vacuum cleaner
named after him.
leotard
Jules Léotard, nineteenth-century French acrobat after whom
the garment is named.