Trades and renovation

The third entry, la chiave a brugola, is the one tool on this list whose name is a person. Brugola is a surname: the Milanese firm founded by Egidio Brugola made the screw with the hexagonal recess sunk into its head, and within a generation the screw, the recess and the little key that turns it had all taken the maker’s name. Nobody hears a family in it any more. Una brugola on its own is simply the key, and a brugola tacked onto any fastener means hex-socket. What makes this worth a minute is that English did exactly the same thing and its speakers notice just as little. « Allen » is a company name too, registered in the United States, and it travelled the same way both words did — inside the flat-pack box, taped to the instructions. So the two languages share no root here at all, and yet they share the habit: each let a manufacturer name a shape. The plain description exists on both sides, la chiave esagonale and « hex key », and on both sides it is the one nobody reaches for.