wiki-illiam #105: q17

( What eponymous word owes its origin to: )

step into the modern world

i closed my dad's lloyds account down today -- sad for all the obvous reasons, and also (sad to me, in a small and silly and poignant way) because his account number had just four digits that weren't zeros, he'd had it so long*, and now there is one less bank account number of just four digits; and massively annoying and baffling because it ended -- after a very long wait -- with me porting £1300 of used twenties in a brown paper bag to pay into another bank, because they claimed this was the only way to hand over the money without charging me


*the old woman who lived across the road owned "crematorium certificate no.7" -- which she had queued up as a teenager at golders green, when cremation was legalised, because she felt it was exciting and futuristic**
**i just looked this up, and this story -- which she often told -- must have been nonsense: cremation had been legalised years before she can have been born :(