Telfair

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A proper name borne by a Scottish-origin family and used for places, most notably the Telfair museum in Savannah, Georgia
2. A surname of Scottish origin, also applied to a Savannah, Georgia art museum named after a local family
3. A family name with Scottish roots, and the title of a historic art museum located in Savannah, Georgia

Etymology: Telfair is a proper-noun-derived word, and its story runs through a Scottish surname rather than a Latin or Greek root. The best-known "telfair" is the Telfair family of Savannah, Georgia: Mary Telfair, a wealthy philanthropist who died in 1875, left her Savannah estate to become the Telfair Academy, the city's first public art museum. Her family's name, of Scottish origin, is the source of the word, and the name is attached to a Georgia museum and a number of other institutions and places named after the family. As a common noun, "telfair" is a specialist term rather than a general one, and its meaning derives directly from the name of the family or the place bearing it, not from any independent word root. Dictionaries record it as a proper noun first and a commonly used name in a limited technical or regional sense second, so the most reliable way to understand the word is as an eponym: a label borrowed from a person to denote something connected with them.