Some additional color on the founding (and name) of Yale University:
In 1701 the Reverend James Pierpont (an ancestor of J.P. Morgan), minister of the First Church, in New Haven, pushed the General Court of Connecticut to charter a college. He thought that the colony should not be dependent on Harvard University for training its ministers. The college operated in the various homes of its tutors for several years, and it was only when Jeremiah Dummer, the colony’s agent in London, donated an estimated 1000 books, that it was decided to build a permanent campus.
After a request by Jeremiah Dummer, Elihu Yale, who had left America at the age of 3 and never returned, made a contribution to the school of some books and East India Company goods that were sold for 562 pounds, 12 shillings. He also gave a portrait of King George I. At the school’s first commencement on the new campus, in 1718, trustees referred to it as Yale College, a name made official in 1745.
It is likely that they did this in order to avoid the more appropriate moniker "Dummer College."