What's in a name?

The Daily Telegraph has a piece today that includes the history of the lesbian entry in that most grand of dictionaries the Oxford English Dictionary. Here are a few choice grafs:

• "During preparations for its 1933 Supplement, one lexicographer averred: "Lesbianism is no doubt a very disagreeable thing, but the word is in regular use, & no serious Supplement to our work should omit it."
• Omitted it was, though. Readers were left with Sapphism - which the Lancet in 1901 likened to morphiomania (opium craving). Lesbian surfaced only with 1976's Supplement, as an 1890 synonym for Tribadism.

BTW: The photo above is of James Murray the famed first editor of the OED. He is also the "Professor" in The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary.