121–130 of 294 posts
Sideburns 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
The 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.
The gold standard for scientific trials is named after a professor named Harry Gold. And the Johari window is named after two guys named Joe and Harry.
Can you provide a citation for Harry Gold? All I find is a chemist convicted of spying for the Soviets. I find [1] which outright declares the etymology is from the economic term, and that it was popularized in medicine by Peter Rudd in 1979, or from a 1962 punning usage referring to literal gold salts. The economic sense of a gold specie currency has uses going back to at least 1764 [3][4][5]. 1: https://www.ncbi.nl…
From Wikipedia:
"Its name came from John W. Kottinger, an Alameda County justice of the peace, who named it after his friend, Union army cavalry Major General Alfred Pleasonton. A typographical error by a recording clerk in Washington, D.C., apparently led to the current spelling."
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.
"PageRank was named after Larry Page?" Interesting to me, as I thought it was Brin's idea, and 3 people worked on the paper.
The color #663399 is named "rebeccapurple", after Rebecca Meyer, who passed away at age 6. https://css-tricks.com/rebbeccapurple-663399/ was unexpected to me when i first learned CSS, and now is a bittersweet memory i gladly pass on.
Named by Eric Meyer, one of the inventors of CSS. His blog posts on Rebecca are heartbreaking: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...
The color #663399 is named "rebeccapurple", after Rebecca Meyer, who passed away at age 6. https://css-tricks.com/rebbeccapurple-663399/ was unexpected to me when i first learned CSS, and now is a bittersweet memory i gladly pass on.
Named by Eric Meyer, one of the inventors of CSS. His blog posts on Rebecca are heartbreaking: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...
Most 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.
Tex-Mex and Cali-Mex aren't the same thing, and California has no claim to Tex-Mex...
I find this post and comments to be surprisingly delightful. I'll aggregate the scattered gems in the comments here: - Sideburns : Named after the American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside. - Heaviside function (a mathematical step function) : named after Oliver Heaviside - The Children's python (animal) : Named after John George Children. - Snowflake, AZ : Named after Erastus Snow and William Jordon Flake. - Lake…
Nice. As an aside, how do you pronounce Heaviside? Is it hevy-side or heevy-side or...?