“East Lynne is a 1931 American pre-Code film version of Ellen Wood’s eponymous 1861 novel, which was adapted by Tom Barry and Bradley King and directed by Frank Lloyd”.
The word “eponymous” in this announcement is used quite correctly here, but that itself is cause for pleasant wonder. We love “eponymous”. In this context, it means that the 1931 film has the same name as a novel written by Ellen Wood (better known as Mrs Henry Wood; her maiden name was Ellen Price). In this case the names are the same because the film is a version of the book. A completely different film might have the same name as the novel, but would have no right to be “eponymous”.
It’s one of those long words we’ve suddenly discovered the meaning of, and are dying to show off. A quick check online finds Merriam-Webster telling us that it means: “of, relating to, or being the person or thing for whom or which something is named”. Yes, it covers a number of different relationships, and can be used adjectivally to designate a person or an object that has the same name as something else: the word is Greek and means “from, or by, the name”.
It originally signified the name of a hero from whom a city, or a people, took its name. The most familiar use of the word today is when the name of an individual is used to designate a political or public event, such as “boycott”, or the title of a publication: this happens often in popular contemporary music: rock bands, I’m told, think nothing of calling their tunes by their own names.
Another thing: Merriam-Webster mentions “a person or thing for whom something is named”. We would think this usage quite normal, but it is in fact an Americanism, introduced in the last fifty years. Traditional English speaks of the process of naming “after” someone or something, not naming “for”. My child is named after my favourite Shakespearean hero or Dickens heroine, say. We named our house after the place in Burma we’d lived in all our lives. Here’s another idiom now forgotten because America has usurped it. No harm, but it’s another loss. And “Burma” is now “Myanmar”, of course. But that’s another article.
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