2986: Pilates Didn’t Call it Pilates Feb 23, 2025

It is pretty common for an innovation to be named after the innovator, but less commonly is it done against his wishes. The term ‘Pilates’ takes its name from the inventor of both the methodology and aparati, Joseph Pilates. It is stylized with a capital letter even though most other eponyms (words based on people’s names) aren’t. In his published works however, he coined the term ‘contrology’, not using ‘Pilates’, as in his book outlining the system “Return to Life through Contrology”. Though this has caught on for some more niche purposes, this is certainly not the dominant one.