Ashley Pond in Los Alamos, NM is a pond named after a man named Ashley Pond. It might be more correctly called Ashley Pond pond?
Things Unexpectedly Named After People
81–90 of 294 posts
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#82Sabian, the cymbal manufacturer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabian), was named after Sally, Billy, and Andy Zildjian, the children of Robert Zildjian, when he had a conflict with his brother Armand Zildjian after he was not chosen to be the main CEO and successor of Avedis Zildjian.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't believe it would have been called Taco Smith. It happened to be that the dudes last name made sense in the context of a dinner bell being rung for tacos.
Taco smith would be an interesting restaurant, maybe using an anvil as a logo instead of a bell
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Ah, my bad, sorry.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#85I recently discover that mesmerize is also named after a person
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#86If you know a girl named Mercedes, she might be named after a car company which was named after someone's daughter. https://www.mercedesbenzchicago.com/what-does-the-mercedes-b...
Conversely, Porsche is named for Ferdinand Porsche and not the female name.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#88There seem to be two meanings of “unexpected” not being differentiated here:
1) name-derived terms like Debian, or the French ‘poubelle’ in the comments, which have become genericized to the point where most of its users don’t know the derivation
2) a more interesting subset of (1), like PageRank, or Lake Mountain in the comments, where part or all of the name itself looks like a normal word appropriate for the situation. (a related concept is nominative determinism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism)
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
None of those use the food an adjective /adjacent nickname. They are all possessives.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#90Page is an aptonym. There's a reason it's not called BrinRank.
French Fries.
Crapper toilet.