Gwinnett

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A colonial-era planter and politician who signed the Declaration of Independence ; a county in northern Georgia named after that signer
2. An eighteenth-century Georgia statesman who put his name to the Declaration of Independence ; a populous northern Georgia county that bears his name
3. A signatory of the American Declaration of Independence from Georgia ; the Georgia county in the metro Atlanta area named in his honour

Etymology: Button Gwinnett was one of the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the Georgia county that bears his name is the reason this word now appears on maps, in sports listings and in news reports. The name "gwinnett" on its own is a clipped form of "Gwinnett County," a shortening that local usage produces for a place name that is easy to abbreviate. Gwinnett himself was a Georgia politician who represented the colony at the Continental Congress in 1776. The county was named in his honour, so the word is a surname turned into a place name, and the short form carries that place-name sense alone rather than any meaning of its own. Anyone who hears "Gwinnett" in ordinary conversation is almost always hearing a reference to the county rather than to the man.