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Things Unexpectedly Named After People

notes.rolandcrosby.com

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Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#171

Post by hannasanarion »

bb2018 wrote: post #142
air7 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I can't edit the comment anymore. Here are a few more. - German Chocolate Cake - Named after the English-American chocolate maker Samuel German. - Baker's Chocolate (popular American brand of baking chocolate) - Named after Dr. William Baker - Loop subdivision (CG term) - Named after its inventor Charles Loop. - French Hill (neighborhood in Jerusalem) - Named after British general John French. (Disputed) - Mob…

According to Snopes, the song "Sweet Home Alabama" was actually inspired by a radio commercial for "Sweet Homes" that had aired decades earlier. Full circle.

You fell for a Snopes TRoLL. They made that story up. Mobile homes are called that because they can move. There was never a mobile home company called "sweet homes", and the industry does not originate in Mobile.

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#172

Post by dehrmann »

cruano wrote: post #55
ezoe wrote: post #21

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.

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...

This, like a lot of these, feels like a happy coincidence people probably realized at the time and couldn't say "no" to.

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#173

Post by hannasanarion »

air7 wrote: post #138
air7 wrote: post #69

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…

Sadly, I can't edit the comment anymore. Here are a few more. - German Chocolate Cake - Named after the English-American chocolate maker Samuel German. - Baker's Chocolate (popular American brand of baking chocolate) - Named after Dr. William Baker - Loop subdivision (CG term) - Named after its inventor Charles Loop. - French Hill (neighborhood in Jerusalem) - Named after British general John French. (Disputed) - Mob…

The Mobile Homes one is a fake story made up by Snopes for their TRoLL section. It's not true. There was no business called Sweet Homes in Mobile, and the prefab housing industry did not originate there.

Manufactured houses really did grow out of the camper/trailer industry. The name "mobile home" is a holdover from when they had wheels. The first companies to deliver prefab houses to set on foundations already had thriving businesses making trailer-homes or other prefab structures (like those seen on construction sites)

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#174

Post by DonHopkins »

I was confused by Hamming Windows and Hanning Windows. At first I though Hanning was a typo for Hamming, but no, they are both similar but slightly different things, named after different people.

https://www.tek.com/blog/window-functions-spectrum-analyzers

Hamming and Hanning

These two similarly-named Hamming and Hanning (more properly referred to as Hann) window functions both have a sinusoidal shape. The difference between them is that the Hanning window touches zero at both ends, removing any discontinuity. The Hamming window stops just shy of zero, meaning that the signal will still have a slight discontinuity.

https://www.tek.com/-/media/sites/default/files/u811871/hamm...

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#175

Post by darkerside »

air7 wrote: post #138
air7 wrote: post #69

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…

Sadly, I can't edit the comment anymore. Here are a few more. - German Chocolate Cake - Named after the English-American chocolate maker Samuel German. - Baker's Chocolate (popular American brand of baking chocolate) - Named after Dr. William Baker - Loop subdivision (CG term) - Named after its inventor Charles Loop. - French Hill (neighborhood in Jerusalem) - Named after British general John French. (Disputed) - Mob…

I believe French drains were invented by an engineer named James French

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#176

Post by hannasanarion »

jimhefferon wrote: post #131
goodcanadian wrote: post #110

My understanding is that mobile homes are named for Mobile, Alabama, and not for the fact that they are moveable.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mobile-home-origin/ What do you know?

Look again. It's in The Repository Of Lost Legends (TROLL) section.
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