oh, and in case you're wondering. In my little corner of the theory world, our practice, and the one I've followed, is to name equations, especially approximations, descriptively. One example that might be familiar, and which is so general it won't name any names, would be Mean Field Theory, or a Mean Field Approximation.

In our little corner of the world, there are a handful of named equations, reserved for the big ones, and then, usually, extensions or approximations and so on are named descriptively, rather than for the authors. This is pragmatic: one names the equations when deriving them, rather than have someone else do it for you.

The other pragmatic benefit is related to, but not identical to, the idea of beauty in physical theory. If one can descriptively name a particular equation in just the right way, then the name itself tells those familiar in the art pretty much what the equation does, and, in many cases, how it was derived.

Naming then is an art, occasionally abused; when done correctly one hopes for, ideally, an aid to clarity and new ideas.

There's also an ethical choice implicit in this convention; the idea is to attempt to remove oneself and one's ego from the process. This can be very hard to do, even for those who would normally be ego-less.

Theoreticians, those of us who work down in the weeds at least, don't get, nor expect, general recognition. That doesn't mean we don't have pride in what we do. This whole naming practice can be an interesting stumbling block in discourse, sometimes leading to vicious inside pool.

The canonical example is when someone comes in to give a conference talk about the latest and greatest equation they just discovered and named after themselves.

Ninety-nine percent of the time or greater, of course, the particular equation they think they've discovered was equation 34c in someone else's paper fifty years ago, usually a throwaway for a reason.

(Aside: If you think I'm kidding about the ninety-nine percent, understand that this can be a severe underestimate for some cases.

Consider that, for example, the three-body problem is centuries old, and remains unsolved. Further, this is no obscure problem, it remains the central unsolved issue for mechanics and all that derives from it. It's been looked at by an awful lot of very smart, very motivated, very well-trained people. Coming up with a new, original, and successful approach is, in real terms, vanishingly unlikely. That doesn't stop us all from trying, of course.

The extension to other areas may (and should! if we're all doing our jobs right...) change the odds fractionally, depending on the field; that said, there are very few areas of physical science that haven't had someone dig into them, even if only briefly. Your mileage may vary, I speak here only from my corner of the scientific endeavor.)

This whole naming thing also makes for head-scratching when one sees other schools and fields who practice a different style. Still, my own observation is that, for the most part, most of science and engineering has something like this as an ideal, at this time. I suspect there's always room to fluctuate, given that there's always another generation coming and looking to re-write the conventions.