I think I might have to keep writing about French toast forever, it opens up too many lines of thought. At the APA Pacific I was meant to be making some comments on semantic drift, and I was previously going to talk about pre- and post- Joycean uses of ‘epiphany’, but now I think I might just talk about French toast. Anyway, for a while yesterday I was worried by the following little argument. Assume that French toast is named after the Albany diner proprietor Mr French. Does this mean they are not named after the French? Well, possibly not, because presumably Mr French was, someway or other, named after the French. But this little argument doesn’t go through, because named after is not transitive. Possible example, though only possible because the facts may not back this up. If I name a child Dylan after Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan is (self-)named after Dylan Thomas, it does not follow that the child is named after Dylan Thomas. I don’t know whether His Bobness is named after Dylan Thomas (I remember reading that he denied the connection, but that’s not entirely conclusive), so maybe it isn’t a perfect example, but I think it makes the needed point.