The names of theorems, formulas and numbers are a part of notation that almost nobody questions. We write “Pascal’s triangle”, “Pell’s equation”, “L’Hôpital’s rule” as if the name were a neutral label. It is not: the name records who was read, by whom and in what language. A law that confirms itself In 1980 the American statistician Stephen Stigler published a paper with a provocative law: no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. And, to round it off, he attributed the law to the sociologist Robert K. Merton, who had already studied the phenomenon. Stigler’s law of eponymy is therefore an example of itself. It exaggerates, but it is right with uncomfortable frequency.