German Chocolate Cake owes its name to an English-American chocolate maker named Samuel German.
Things Unexpectedly Named After People
71–80 of 294 posts
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're reading too much into the list. What's the non-name meaning of "Debian" supposed to be?
Named after a person named "Deb" (without the ian). Like the word "Jeffersonian" meaning the philosophy attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
No, Ian is just another name (Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian). Deb is after Debra, who then was his girlfriend and then wife. After that Murdock left Debian and the two divorced, but the name had stuck and there it is still now.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#73Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#74Buses are often called "pullman" in Italy. For long time I thought it was because the pull men (and women) along the road, but instead it appears there are named after some George Pullman.
Also in Italy, the loop highway around Rome is known as GRA, which stands for "Grande Raccordo Anulare" ("Big Annular Highway"), but that is just a backronym: originally it is also the surname of Eugenio Gra, the engineer who designed it.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#75Munich has (at least) two streets unexpectedly named after people - Passauerstraße and Dessauerstraße. The problem of these people is that their names are derived from well-known cities, so everyone just assumes that the streets are named after the cities. The only thing indicating that they are actually named after people is that the street names are written as one word - streets named after places are supposed to be written as two words (e.g. Landshuter Allee), but many people get this wrong even without this twist...
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#76Don’t forget “Crap” named after Thomas Crapper
Thomas Crapper, the inventor of many toilet features, including the floating ballcock, is not the origin of “crap” (which is of Middle English origin, and was used in the sense of excrement and the act of expelling it earlier than Crapper’s work), but is apparently the origin of “crapper” as a term for the fixture one uses for crap.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#77French Hill neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Named after British general John French.
Amusingly, erroneously translated into Hebrew as giv'at tzarfatit - the word for the French nationality.
* Full disclosure: Wikipedia claims it's not true. But it's disputed and I have heard this story from local historians.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#78Also, the term "Guy" which is an eponym for Guy Fawkes https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/guy#Etymology_1
Whenever I think of Guy I think of that one Guy from Galaxy Quest. I don't know if he even had a last name though.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Named after a person named "Deb" (without the ian). Like the word "Jeffersonian" meaning the philosophy attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
No, Ian is just another name (Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian). Deb is after Debra, who then was his girlfriend and then wife. After that Murdock left Debian and the two divorced, but the name had stuck and there it is still now.
No, I know that's the real origin. I'm saying how the name could be interpreted other than deb+ian
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taco John’s is a reasonably successful chain with a similar name.
That really isn't similar in terms of usage. "Taco John" is a person's nickname. (And then, Taco John's is just the place that belongs to Taco John.) But you wouldn't call someone by their last name.
Richard and Maurice McDonald, Wilber Hardee, and Little Caesars are all counter examples.