[grey_whiskers]

Mathematicians tend to name important concepts after themselves, it totally throws people like me who do not see value in memorizing names and associating them with concepts. It would be better if things like “eigenvalues” were named for what they are and not after the German or French dude that discovered them.

Poor choice of example on your part. Eigen is the German word translating roughly to "own" or "characteristic of" which is what an Eigenvalue is.

Diagonalize the matrix representation of a quantum mechanical operator and the values down the diagonal, the eigenvalues, are the allowed values of that operator; if they are strictly real (non-imaginary) they correspond to the physical measurements. Also, such matrices are Hermitian -- their transpose is equal to their complex conjugate; which for diagonal elements requires them to be real.

(Memory from 30+ years ago.)

[Myrddin]

Your explanation of the "eigen" derivation is more germane to the topic.