MADAM – With regard to Peter Card’s letter (ATG No 2391) regarding the use of the term ‘Penny Farthing’ instead of ‘Ordinary Bicycle’, it is the same as the term ‘Hoover’ when referring to a vacuum cleaner of any manufacture.
These nouns have come into the English language because they were the informal noun related to the object concerned.
What must be remembered is that an auctioneer and other catalogue describers use the term Penny Farthing because this is three characters shorter than Ordinary Bicycle. All describers have a limited space in which to describe the item on offer.