A legacy I can live with

If you were the founder of a powerful dynasty that would survive for six centuries after your death, would you want to be remembered for your power, courage, wisdom, and might--or by your furniture?

Slate offers a slideshow featuring people whose names have become nouns, from Jules Leotard to the Jacuzzi brothers (read it here). Compare the number of people familiar with the deeds of Osman I with the number familiar with the ottoman and ask yourself: is this the legacy Osman I would have chosen?

Or imagine if the wonders of modern technology would make it possible to wake poor old Leonhart Fuchs from the dead and take him for a walk through a few garden centers during hanging-basket season. The renowned 16th-century botanist whose name is attached to a plant and a color would see every possible approximation of that name--fuschia, fushya, foosha, fewsha--except the correct one: fuchsia.

I suppose it's better to live on as a word no one can spell than to disappear without a trace, but if the world ever adopts my name as a noun, I hope it's a legacy I can live with. (Die with?)

Let a hogue be a particularly rich chocolate that confers health benefits, or a congratulatory gesture aimed at someone who has placed a Q on the triple-word score in Scrabble ("Hogues all around!"). Let women who have lost their hair to chemotherapy tie their colorful scarves in the hogue knot, or let students struggling to organize ideas into coherent essays try the hogue technique.

I don't care to be a color or an item of clothing or a chair, even a big, soft, cushy chair; I would, however, like to be spelled correctly. I realize that this may be too much to ask--if ordinary people have so much trouble spelling my name correctly while I'm alive and kicking, who will make them shape up and spell it right when I'm gone?

Well, if my legacy gets subjected to the Fuchs treatment, at least I'll be in good company.

Scoot over, Leonhart, and pass me a sandwich. There's room in this jacuzzi for all of us.