Namesake

No, not the amazing book or movie. I have yet to see it.

I don't think people realize how many words in English are derived from proper nouns. Studying for the National Vocabulary Competition, I stumbled across a bunch of words that I never would have guessed are from names of people or places:

bedlam: a state of confusion, from the Hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem in London, which served as an insane asylum.

maudlin: another corruption of, yes, Magdalene; the word, meaning tearful or sentimental, evokes an image of Mary crying.

procrustean: ignoring individual difference. Online Etymology Dictionary says it comes from Procrustes (1583), mythical robber of Attica who seized travelers, tied them to his bed, and either stretched their limbs or lopped of their legs to make them fit it. The name in Greek is Προκρούστης Prokroustes "one who stretches," from προκρούειν prokrouein "to beat out, stretch out," from προ pro- "before" + κρούειν krouein "to strike."

κρούειν is actually a cognate with Russian крусить krusit, Lithuanian kruszù "to smash, crush," Latvian krausīt "to trample," and Old Slavic kruchŭ "crumb." I would assume, therefore that procrustean shares its root with the Yiddish word קרישקע krishke, meaning a crumb or a bit of food, comes from this root as well. (If you were wondering, crust comes from a similar, but unrelated Germanic root - see here on page 62)
In the context of a well-known Yiddish folksong:

לאָמיר אַלע זינגען אַ זמרל,
לחם איז ברױט, בשׂר ודגים וכל מטעמים.
זאָג זשע מיר רבניו, לחם איז װאָס?
בײַ די נגידים , איז לחם אַ פֿרישינקע בילקעלע!
אָבער בײַ אונדז קבצנים, אױ, דלפֿנים, אױ, אבֿיונים
.איז לחם אַ דאַרינקע קרישקעלע, נעבעך

Lomir ale zingen a zemerl,
Lekhem iz broyt, boser v'dogim v'khol matamim.
Zog zhe mir rebenyu, lekhem iz vos?
Bay di n'gidim, iz lekhem a frishinke bilkele!
Ober bay undz kabtsonim, oy delfonim, oy evyoynim
Iz lekhem a darinke krishkele, nebekh.

Let's a sing a song,
Bread, meat, fish and delicacies.
Tell me, what is bread?
The elite eat fresh rolls.
But for us poor beggars,
Bread is a exiguous crumb.

Latkes

All you Ashkenazi Jews out there are surely familiar with latkes, or potato pancakes. Known as a traditional Chanukkah food, it was only brought to my attention recently, although it should have been obvious, that the Jews in Palestine couldn't possibly have eaten latkes: they had no potatoes! In fact, this food only gained popularity, because they are fried in oil, commemorating the oil that miraculously provided light for eight days.
According to this website, the word came into the English language from the Yiddish לאַטקע (latke) came from the Ukrainian оладка (oldka), which is, in turn, the diminutive of the Old Russian оладья (oladya). But wait: it gets better. This comes from the Greek ελαδια (eladia), plural of ελαδιον (eladion), meaning "a little oily thing", "a little oil", or "a young olive tree". ελαδιον (eladion), of course, is naturally the diminute of elaion, "olive oil", which comes from elaia, the (Ancient) Greek for "olive". Whew.

What's funny is that, like everybody knows, latkes are used as a Hanukkah food because they are fried in oil. But who knew that the word for "oil" is actually etymologically related to latke?? Watch this. According to the English Etymology Dictionary: oil, c.1175, from Anglo-Fr. and O.N.Fr. olie, from O.Fr. oile (12c., Mod.Fr. huile), from L. oleum "oil, olive oil" (cf. Sp., It. olio), from Gk. elaion "olive tree," from elaia. Who woulda thunk it?

To put it this way, if the Romans and Slavs hadn't decided to be copycats and steal Greek words, we would not have the word for latke, oil, olive, petroleum, nor Vaseline (gasp!).

So what did those Maccabees eat? To quote The Forward:
The distance from the Yiddish latke to the Greek elaion is about as vast as Diaspora itself, but the relationship is interesting because the first latkes were little cakes made from curd cheese and fried in butter or olive oil. (Eating cheese on Chanukah is said to refer to the Apocryphal story of Judith, who fed salty cheesecakes to the Syrian general Holofornes to make him thirsty, and then plied him with wine until he was so inebriated she could chop off his head with a sword; this symbolic connection, though, was not made until many centuries after the first cheese latkes.) As Jews began to migrate eastward into Eastern Europe, butter and oil grew increasingly precious and expensive, and poultry fat became the chief frying agent; this made the use of cheese off-limits, and so by the Middle Ages latkes were most often made not from dairy ingredients but rather with a simple batter made from buckwheat flour (recall the original Russian meaning of "a flat cake made from unleavened wheat flour").

In any case, bon appétit. Who cares about the etymology? Not me.