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.
MySQL's fork, MariaBD, is also named after one os Widenius' daughters.
Things Unexpectedly Named After People
51–60 of 294 posts
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there another pre-existing meaning for "poubelle" that makes this naming unexpected? I mean, it _is_ the French term for "trash can". It might be surprising to you, for example, if you'd suddenly find out that trash cans are named after "Michael Trashcan" or something along those lines.
It's a "can" that one puts "trash" into, so the term appears descriptive on the surface. When it then turns out to just be named after the inventor, it would indeed be quite surprising. Which is why I was asking whether there was some pre-existing meaning for the word. Otherwise it's like: Oh my God! I just realized that Zeppelins were invented by Graf von Zeppelin. What are the odds of the person inventing airships…
The surprising thing is not that he invented the poubelle. It’s that he’s just one elected official in one city who increased its usage. I’m on the other side of the Atlantic, in beautiful Québec, and we also call it une poubelle.
It’s as if computers were called Jobs machines.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#53Earlier 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?
It's a bit how in British English vacuum cleaners are often called "Hoovers" after the brand. At one hand, yes, it is a family name, but the word has become so genericized that people even talk about "hoovering" their carpet and any connection to a name is lost.
And young children (and occasionally their parents jocularly imitating them) talk about "hooving" the carpet, because a "hoover" is obviously a machine for "hooving", right?
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#54Leatherman multitools are named after the inventor, Timothy S. Leatherman.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#55PageRank 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.
Huh
>The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it's called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010715123343/https://www.googl...
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#56Sideburns aren't called sideburns just because they're on the sides of your face; sideburns were originally called burnsides after the American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Burnside#Sideburns
Who decided to flip the words though
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#57Sideburns aren't called sideburns just because they're on the sides of your face; sideburns were originally called burnsides after the American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Burnside#Sideburns
Who decided to flip the words though
I believe it was Thomas J Flip, in 1911.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#58Going down the wiki rabbit hole on this led me to the very sad history of Ian Murdock, founder of Debian (Deb was his girlfriend's name at the time). Apparently he hanged himself in 2015 after a somewhat bizarre tweet storm announcing his suicide.
Ian Murdock( his name ) & his wife name debra ...debian. (wkipedia)
docker Inc ....Not sure if its coincidence...he was working for Docker Inc. (Ian Murdock...last four letters "dock" docker inc.)... However very sad ending..another gem lost de excessive poiice harassment....like aaron.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#59The city of Morgan Hill, CA is actually named after the rancher in the area, not the hill that’s in the city limits. That’s called El Toro.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#60Bridgestone.