If you ever wondered what it feels like to have your name etched into history for all the wrong reasons, you’re in for a ride. In this roundup of 10 people immortalized for terrible reasons, we’ll dig into the bizarre ways their monikers became shorthand for horror, cruelty, or sheer annoyance. Buckle up, because these stories prove that a lasting legacy isn’t always a badge of honor.

Why These 10 People Immortalized Remain Infamous

10 Henry Shrapnel

The term “shrapnel,” now synonymous with the deadly fragments that pepper battlefields and blast zones, actually traces back to a 23‑year‑old British officer named Henry Shrapnel. In 1784, Shrapnel devised a method of loading surplus metal pieces into artillery shells, essentially turning every explosion into a hailstorm of lethal junk. His innovation was intended to maximize casualties, and it quickly caught on among armies eager for a more efficient way to maim foes.

At the time, soldiers were already experimenting with tossing random bits of metal from guns to boost the carnage. Shrapnel’s breakthrough was to pre‑load those fragments into a bomb, light the fuse, and hurl it, thereby guaranteeing a far wider spray of deadly shrapnel. This approach cemented his name in the lexicon of warfare, even as the precise definition drifted over the centuries.

Even though “shrapnel” has broadened in modern usage, the grim connotation remains intact. Henry Shrapnel wasn’t exactly looking for fame; he was rewarded with a lifetime stipend from the Crown for his contributions to the art of bloodletting, and his legacy lives on every time a news anchor grimaces at the word.

9 Captain Lynch

Captain William Lynch was a man whose hobby was far from collecting stamps. He headed a rough‑justice crew known as the “Lynch‑men,” whose favorite pastime was, well, lynching. In an era when formal law enforcement felt distant and ineffective, Lynch took matters into his own hands, meting out vigilante punishments that were more brutal than anything the courts could imagine.

Although today the word “lynching” is heavily associated with racially motivated violence, its original usage wasn’t limited to any one group. Lynch and his band believed the government was too remote to deal with outlaws, so they formed their own brand of swift, savage retribution. Their methods resembled the Punisher more than Batman, with victims often tortured, strung up, and brutally murdered.

The sheer scale of their cruelty turned Captain Lynch’s surname into a synonym for the most vicious form of mob rule in American history. His name now evokes the darkest chapters of extrajudicial killing, forever linking him to a word that still shudders listeners when uttered.

8 Thomas Bowdler

When you hear the verb “bowdlerize,” you probably picture someone snipping out the steamy or violent parts of a classic text, replacing them with something far less exciting. That very act bears the name of Thomas Bowdler, an 18th‑century doctor, philanthropist, and prison reformer who fancied himself a literary guardian.

Bowdler produced a “polite” edition of Shakespeare’s works, stripping away what he deemed inappropriate. His edits were so heavy‑handed that they earned him infamy: in Hamlet, Ophelia’s suicide was turned into an accidental drowning; the prostitute Doll Tearsheet vanished from Henry IV, Part 2; exclamations of “God!” were softened to “Heavens above!” He even excised entire characters, like Othello, from the canon.

While Bowdler thought he was doing a public service, his over‑cautious revisions made him a literary villain. Later editors took his approach to absurd extremes, swapping famous lines for bland paraphrases, cementing Bowdler’s legacy as the poster child for over‑censorship.

7 Christopher Leyland

Christopher Leyland was a celebrated British naval officer turned horticultural wizard. After retiring in 1889, he devoted his life to gardening, creating an arboretum, importing exotic palms, and even keeping a menagerie that included deer, ostriches, and bears. His expertise made him one of the most respected silviculturists of his time.

Unfortunately, Leyland’s botanical brilliance birthed a plant that would become a horticultural nightmare. By crossing two cypress fir strains, he inadvertently created the Leylandii—a fast‑growing evergreen that quickly earned the reputation as Britain’s most despised tree. The Oxford Biographical Dictionary described it as “an object of fear and loathing,” and Collins’ Tree Guide dubbed it “the most hated tree in Britain.”

Gardeners today often see the Leylandii not as a tree but as a pest, sometimes even resorting to burning them down. For a man who loved plants, being forever linked to such a reviled species is a twisted kind of immortality.

6 Dr. Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin

Many assume the guillotine was invented by Dr. Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin, but the truth is far more tragic. Guillotin was a humanitarian physician who campaigned against the gruesome, often botched, beheadings of his day. He petitioned the French government for a humane method of execution, hoping to spare condemned souls a painful death.

The French government obliged, commissioning a French surgeon and a German harpsichord maker to design a device that could cleanly slice a head in one swift blow. To Guillotin’s dismay, the resulting apparatus was christened with his own surname, forever binding his name to the very thing he sought to reform.

Within a year, the guillotine became the emblem of the Reign of Terror, cutting down thousands. Guillotin spent the rest of his life pleading for a name change, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Even into the 20th century, his descendants continued to lobby for a different moniker, but the association remained.

5 Nicolas Chauvin

The adjective “chauvinist” now describes a narrow‑minded, sexist bigot, but its origin points back to Nicolas Chauvin, a fervent soldier of Napoleon’s army. Chauvin embodied blind loyalty, fighting fiercely for the emperor and sustaining nearly twenty severe wounds in the process.

When Napoleon’s fortunes waned, Chauvin’s unwavering devotion fell out of fashion. The term “chauvinist” morphed over time, shedding its original connotation of loyal soldierliness and adopting a modern sense of arrogant, misogynistic superiority. Thus, Chauvin’s name transitioned from a badge of patriotism to a pejorative label.

Today, the word carries a heavy, negative weight, forever linking Nicolas Chauvin to an insult he never imagined, turning his legacy into a cautionary tale about how history can rewrite personal honor.

4 Leopold von Sacher‑Masoch

Imagine waking up to discover that your surname has become synonymous with a particular sexual fetish. That’s precisely what happened to Leopold von Sacher‑Masoch, whose name now defines “masochism.” In 1883, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft‑Ebing needed a label for a newly identified sexual disorder and chose Sacher‑Masoch’s name, pairing it with “sadism,” which had already been linked to the Marquis de Sade.

The twist? While de Sade was long dead, Sacher‑Masoch was still alive, having authored the erotic novel Venus in Furs in 1870. The book depicts a man who willingly submits to a dominant woman, a theme that captured Krafft‑Ebing’s imagination. Although Sacher‑Masoch penned about fifteen works, it was this single novel that forever branded him.

For the next twelve years, he lived under the shadow of a term that reduced his entire literary career to a single, controversial concept. His name became a linguistic shorthand for a type of sexual behavior, a legacy he could not escape.

3 The Marquis de Sade

The Marquis de Sade’s name gave rise to the word “sadism,” a term describing pleasure derived from inflicting pain. Even before the label existed, de Sade’s scandalous novels—filled with murder, bestiality, incest, and necrophilia—earned him more than three decades of imprisonment.

He relished the notoriety, treating his infamy as a form of publicity, while his family suffered the stigma. For two centuries, the de Sade descendants concealed their lineage, refusing even to utter the family name, fearing social ostracism. It wasn’t until 2014 that a descendant finally reclaimed the Marquis title, confronting the dark shadow that had loomed for generations.

The Marquis’s legacy illustrates how a single individual can imprint a word onto the collective consciousness, turning personal notoriety into a lasting linguistic monument.

2 Barbara And Kenneth Handler

While having a sexual perversion named after you is grim, the Handlers’ story offers a different brand of misery. Barbara and Kenneth were the real‑life inspirations behind the iconic toy couple Barbie and Ken, names chosen by their parents as a tribute.

Unfortunately, the world’s perception turned the siblings into a romantic duo, sparking a Freudian tangle. The siblings, who were actually brother and sister, grew up resenting the association. Barbara decried Barbie as a shallow, air‑headed figure, while Kenneth found Ken’s squeaky‑clean image boring and stifling.

Their lives were forever shadowed by a pair of dolls they never intended to represent, illustrating how a seemingly harmless homage can become a source of personal anguish.

1 The Nazi Doctors

Up to this point we’ve examined ordinary individuals whose names became attached to terrible concepts. Now we confront a darker category: notorious perpetrators whose surnames live on as ordinary medical terminology. Nazi doctors, through horrendous experiments on Jews and other victims, inadvertently coined a slew of eponymous diseases that persist in modern medicine.

Take Reiter’s syndrome, named after Hans Reiter, whose lethal experiments at Buchenwald claimed over 250 lives. Max Clara’s name lives on in the “Clara cell,” derived from samples harvested from Holocaust victims. Friedrich Wegener’s contribution is “Wegener’s granulomatosis,” a condition identified through inhumane research in the Łódź ghetto. These eponyms illustrate a chilling legacy where scientific discovery is stained by atrocity.

Even after the Nazi affiliations were uncovered, the medical community continued using the names. A 1977 campaign sought to replace Reiter’s syndrome with “reactive arthritis,” yet by 2012, fewer than half of physicians had adopted the new term, showing how entrenched these dark eponyms remain.

When we think of foods named after places, we often forget that some tasty treats actually carry the names of real people. Here are 10 people immortalized in the foods we love.

1 Ruth Cleveland Or Babe Ruth

10 people immortalized: A Sweet Legacy

The Baby Ruth is an American candy bar made with peanuts, caramel, and nougat. It’s almost what you’d get if you took an Oh Henry! bar and turned the fudge into nougat.

When the Curtiss Candy Company introduced the Baby Ruth bar in 1921, many people assumed its name was a reference to Babe Ruth, the star baseball player. Curtiss claimed that their candy bar was named after Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. Uh huh.

Ruth Cleveland had died at age 12 in 1904. By 1921, she’d been dead for 17 years. Her father was also old news, having passed away in 1908. Babe Ruth, on the other hand, was a household name in 1921, not only for his baseball talents, but also for his reckless lifestyle off the field. When people noted these facts, Curtiss stood by their Ruth Cleveland story. They never had to pay royalties to Babe Ruth.

What’s the official story today? The Baby Ruth brand is now owned by Nestle. When your humble researcher went to their Baby Ruth page, he found no explanation of the name whatsoever (unlike their page about Oh Henry!).

2 John McIntosh

John McIntosh was a farmer in what is now South Dundas, about 100 km (60 mi) south of Ottawa, Canada. Sometime after 1811, either he or his son Allan discovered several apple seedlings while clearing land. Those seedlings were transplanted, and one in particular produced fruit of immense quality. The skin was red and green, the fruit was tart, and it was suitable for both eating and cooking.

Allan learned grafting around 1835 and used it to clone the precious tree. He and his brother Sandy promoted the resulting fruit as the “McIntosh Red.” However, the McIntosh’s popularity didn’t take off until the 20th century. One reason was that McIntosh apple trees are highly susceptible to a disease called apple scab. Once effective fungicides were invented, apple scab became less of a problem. The McIntosh apple is still popular, but has now been eclipsed by the Red Delicious, Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and Fuji.

3 Luisa Tetrazzini

Luisa Tetrazzini was an internationally‑famous Italian soprano in the early 20th century, known for her strong high notes and her mastery of runs, trills, and staccati. At one point, a contract dispute caused performance hang‑ups in New York, so she declared: “I will sing in San Francisco if I have to sing there in the streets, for I know the streets of San Francisco are free.” The papers loved it, and on Christmas Eve 1910, she appeared on a stage at the corner of San Francisco’s Market and Kearney to serenade a crowd of some 250,000 people.

It was common for chefs to name new dishes after famous people, and one chef decided to name his after Tetrazzini. The recipe varies but usually includes fowl or seafood, mushrooms, almonds, and a white cheese sauce. Vegetables are often added, and it’s typically served atop pasta. But who was the chef? Was it Mr. Pavani, the chef at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City? Was it legendary French chef George Auguste Escoffier? Or was it Ernest Arbogast, the chef at the Palace in San Francisco? Alas, nobody knows.

4 Clara “Tootsie” Hirshfield

Tootsie Rolls are marketed as “the iconic treat that offers a perfectly‑balanced cocoa taste, lined with a subtle, fruit‑flavored undertone.” (This scribbler would describe them as an individually‑wrapped mini‑log, not‑quite caramel and not‑quite chocolate and which he was not‑quite happy to get for Halloween.)

Would you believe that Tootsie Roll Industries Inc., the maker of Tootsie Rolls, is a publicly traded company which booked about US$540 million in revenue in 2013? The company was founded in 1896 by Leo Hirshfield, an Austrian immigrant to the United States. Tootsie Rolls were their first product, but over time they developed many others (for example, the Tootsie Pop, a lollipop). They also acquired many other confectionery brands, including Dubble Bubble and Junior Mints.

Why were they called Tootsie Rolls? In the late 1800s, the word “tootsie” was slang for “girl” or “sweetheart.” The official story is that Leo Hirshfield named Tootsie Rolls after his daughter Clara, who went by the nickname “Tootsie.”

5 Reuben Kulakofsky Or Arnold Reuben

Most people agree that a Reuben sandwich includes rye bread, corned beef, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut—but who was Reuben? There are two common claims.

One claim is that Reuben was Reuben Kulakofsky (or Kolakofsky), a grocer from Omaha, Nebraska. Apparently, he devised the sandwich for late‑night poker players at the Blackstone Hotel. That claim seems unlikely, since Kulakofsky was Jewish and it wouldn’t be kosher to mix beef and cheese, but maybe it was a joke?

The second common claim is that the Reuben sandwich originated at the now‑defunct Reuben’s (or Reuben’s Restaurant), a deli in New York City named after its founder, Arnold Reuben. In fact, that claim has several variations. The most common one says that actress Anna Seelos came into the deli after her nightly performance. She asked for a sandwich and got one with rye bread, baked Virginia ham, roast turkey, Swiss cheese, coleslaw, and Reuben’s special Russian dressing. That version was known as the “Reuben Special,” and the Reuben sandwich was a variation that came later.

Unfortunately, there are no known reliable records to establish which claim is true.

6 Brother Marie‑Clement

Vital Rodier was born in central France in the early 19th century. In 1859, he traveled to northern Algeria and joined the Brothers of the Annunciation, a Catholic organization of which his uncle was already a member. He became Brother Marie‑Clement. The brotherhood ran an orphanage, which Rodier helped to manage.

The orphanage included a large farm, and Brother Marie‑Clement soon took a keen interest in horticulture. At some point, he either developed or discovered a new variety of citrus fruit (it may actually have originated in the Orient). The French botanist Louis Trabut noted the new variety and recommended it be called the Clementine in honor of Marie‑Clement.

Clementines are also sometimes called Christmas oranges, because their peak season is November through January. They were once thought to be a hybrid of a mandarin and a bitter orange, but modern genetic studies have confirmed that they’re a hybrid of mandarins and sweet oranges.

7 A Boy Named Henry

The Oh Henry! is a candy bar containing fudge, peanuts, and caramel. It’s made by Nestle in the USA and by Hershey in Canada (the two versions are actually a little bit different). The official history (from the Nestle and Hershey Canada websites) says that the original Oh Henry! bar was introduced in 1920, by the Williamson Candy Company of Chicago.

“The bar was named after a boy who used to come into the Williamson Candy Company factory to flirt with the girls making candy. Every time the girls needed to have something done, they would call ‘Oh Henry!’ ”

Aww, how sweet. Is it true, though? There are other stories. One says that George Williamson (the founder of the candy company) enjoyed the short stories of William Sydney Porter, who wrote under the pen name O. Henry. Another story says the candy bar was originally developed by, and named after, Tom Henry, a candy maker who would help others improve their candy bars. One thing is certain—it wasn’t named after King Henry VIII.

8 Ah Bing

Ah Bing was born in Manchuria, China in the first half of the 19th century. He eventually traveled to America and around 1855 he found work in the orchards of the Lewelling family near Milwaukie, Oregon. Over time, he became a foreman, overseeing 30 other workers.

Seth Lewelling, the brother of the original orchard founder, was a horticulturist who was very good at developing new varieties of cherry. In 1860, he grew the first Black Republican cherry tree (the name sounds strange now, but meant something different then). In 1875, a Black Republican planting produced a promising seedling—the cherries were so big that some people mistook them for crabapples! Seth named the new variety the Bing cherry, after his foreman.

Over time, the Bing cherry became very popular, and it’s still the most produced variety of sweet cherry in the USA. In 1889, Ah Bing returned to China to visit his family. The US government’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented him from returning to America.

9 Otto Von Bismarck

Jelly‑filled doughnuts (with no doughnut hole) originated in Germany, where they were traditionally eaten to celebrate New Year’s Eve and the carnival days before Lent (Rose Monday and Shrove Tuesday). They’re usually frosted with icing, topped with whipped cream, or sprinkled with sugar. The filling could actually be jelly, jam, chocolate, custard, or something else.

German immigrants brought many of their traditions to North America, including the jelly‑filled doughnut. Some North Americans call them Bismarcks (or Bismarks). Other North Americans call them jelly doughnuts or jam busters. There’s no known record of how the word Bismarck was first applied to the snack, but Otto von Bismarck was a world‑renowned German in the 1800s. He was first Chancellor of Germany, and many American things were named after him, including the capital of North Dakota.

There’s also an entirely different food known as a Bismarck! That would be the Dutch baby pancake, a sweet, light, hollow roll (popover) normally served at breakfast. Despite their name, they were invented by a restaurant in Seattle.

10 Richard Williams And Enoch Bartlett

Outside of Asia, the most common variety of pear is the Williams pear, a special offshoot of the European pear tree species. It’s named after Richard Williams, who raised the trees in his nursery and spread them across England. It’s said that the first ones came from the yard of a schoolmaster in the village of Aldermaston.

An American named James Carter (not the peanut‑farming President) brought several Williams pear trees to the United States. They were planted on land owned by Thomas Brewer in Roxbury, Massachusetts. That land ended up in the hands of one Enoch Bartlett, who sold the pears and spread them across North America. Maybe he didn’t know they already had a name, or maybe he just ignored that minor fact, but he called them Bartlett pears and the name stuck. It’s what North Americans call them to this day.