Names as verbs

Language Log 2025-06-12

In a comment on yesterday's post "A 12th-century influencer", Laura Morland wrote:

Thanks for sharing "to abelard," the new verb of the month! Note to AP: the grammarians will insist that it be spelled with a lower-case "a". (Verbs are never capitalized, not even in German, I don't believe.)

This is one where The Errorist might have the upper hand.

The name most often verbed in English is probably MacGyver, and its verbal uses (almost?) always retain the capital letters. A few examples from the news:

[link] Don’t MacGyver a Solution to the R-454B Shortage [link] This PopSocket Will Help You MacGyver Your Way Out of a Pickle [link] 5 Badass Female TV Characters In STEM (And An Instance They Have MacGyvered) [link] Macgyvered Neck Brace Saves Rare Peruvian Grasshopper [link] The Pinkbike Podcast: Fox's Gearbox, 'MacGyvering' Ultra Premium Bikes & Counting Chains [link] ‘MacGyvering’ Inventorship – It’s Much More than a TV Trope

Merriam-Webster agrees; so does Wiktionary, though they give a lower-case version as an "alternate spelling". The OED as well:

And the BBC even wrote about it — "How'MacGyver' became a verb".

I didn't yet turn up a "grammarian" opinion on this, but I did find a scholarly paper on the history of the verbification process: Aurélie Héois, “When Proper Names Become Verbs: A Semantic Perspective“, Lexis 2020.