One of the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage, that is, the invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for commercial products that become general terms (usually without capital letters) for any version of that product. Older examples are aspirin, nylon, vaseline and zipper; Word formation 53 more recent examples are granola, kleenex, teflon and xerox. It may be that there is an obscure technical origin (e.g. te(tra)-fl(uor)-on) for some of these invented terms, but after their first coinage, they tend to become everyday words in the language.

The most salient contemporary example of coinage is the word google. Originally a misspelling for the word googol (= the number 1 followed by 100 zeros), in the creation of the word Googleplex, which later became the name of a company (Google), the term google (without a capital letter) has become a widely used expression meaning “to use the internet to find information.” New products and concepts (ebay) and new activities (“Have you tried ebaying it?”) are the usual sources of coinage.

New words based on the name of a person or a place are called eponyms. When we talked about a hoover (or even a spangler), we were using an eponym. Other common eponyms are sandwich (from the eighteenth-century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his bread and meat together while gambling) and jeans (from the Italian city of Genoa where the type of cloth was first made). Some eponyms are technical terms, based on the names of those who first discovered or invented things, such as fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit), volt (from the Italian, Alessandro Volta) and watt (from the Scottish inventor, James Watt).