I just read (from a text by K Hardy) that the Vandermonde determinant was named after Vandermonde by Henri Lebesgue, and was not ever recorded in Vandermonde’s work.
The list of other Misnomers
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Another classic misnomer: L’Hospital’s rule, actually discovered by Johann Bernoulli and then purchased by L’Hospital to put in his text book.
I just read that the Gram-Schmidt process was first used by Laplace. So the list goes on … All other contributions are welcomed and much appreciated.
There is supposed to be a name for this: Stigler’s Law.
And I’ve read that misnomy is common in Statistics as well. It seems that the Gaussian and Poisson distribution were all originally discovered by one of the Bernoulli’s.
Another misnomer. The Mobius strip/band was first discovered and first published by Listing. See the second last paragraph of http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Mobius.html
The MAA digital Library states that Johann Listing discovered the surface two months earlier than Mobius. (No reference given.) http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/?pa=historicalEvent&sa=browseFrontEnd&month=8&day=26&x=56&y=13
Apparently Boyer’s Law is more apt, according to Kennedy (Amer. Math. Monthly 1972). He states in his article:
BOYER’S LAW. Mathematical formulas and theorems are usually not named after their original discoverers.
It is perhaps interesting to note that this is probably a rare instance of a law whose statement confirms its own validity!