PageRank was named after Larry Page?
MySQL is named after the one of co-founder's daughter, My?
I knew the Debian. but this is mind boggling.
Things Unexpectedly Named After People
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Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't just a list of things named after people, but "unexpectedly named". For example "Main Street" being named after a person is surprising since you'd usually expect it to come from "main" in the sense of "principal". "Price Club" is funny since you'd expect that it's referring to low prices. Is there another pre-existing meaning for "poubelle" that makes this naming unexpected?
I think you're reading too much into the list. What's the non-name meaning of "Debian" supposed to be?
It’s still unexpected
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#23Quite obvious omission for every C/C++ programmer, but: https://www.godbolt.org/ Of course the "offical" name is "Compiler Explorer", but everybody just refers to it as "Godbolt" (probably because of the URL), which I thought is a weird but interesting name for a programming tool until I learned much too late that a certain "Matt Godbolt" has created it :D
The striking name has led to confusion: https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1085770107899576320?s=...
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#24My favourite is the Heaviside function [1], which is named after Oliver Heaviside [2], who just happened to have an appropriate name for a function with one heavy side!
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#25There's a common story that referring to a toilet as a "crapper" was related to Thomas Crapper. Apparently, not true, despite his influence in the field. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper
That is true of Sandwich (earl of) tho, which I find fun.
Poubelle, the trash can In French is directly named after a Mr Poubelle.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#26Pilates are named after Joe Pilates
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#27Most of these are great. Taco Bell makes sense to me however - I didn't expect to buy bells there. If it had been named after a Melanie Taco or similar, THAT would've been notable. My contribution: Lake Mountain in Victoria! "There is no lake at Lake Mountain, the area was named after George Lake, who was the Surveyor-General of the area including the mountain." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mountain_(Victoria…
I had always assumed the bell managed to reference both a dinner bell (food) and a mission bell (California, with its Hispanic population, hence Tex-Mex). I'm blown away it's just the founder's name.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#28PageRank was named after Larry Page? MySQL is named after the one of co-founder's daughter, My? I knew the Debian. but this is mind boggling.
"PageRank was named after Larry Page?"
Interesting to me, as I thought it was Brin's idea, and 3 people worked on the paper.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#29Many of these are just words subject to multiple interpretations, one of which happens to be a person's proper name, similar to the old linguistic teaser: "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana"
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#30The Outerbridge Crossing really surprised me! I had always assumed it was the most outer bridge crossing from New Jersey into New York.
Another piece of local infrastructure named after the architect is the Holland Tunnel. It’s not named after the region in Europe and has no relation to New York originally being settled by the Dutch.