191–200 of 294 posts
Most think it a native name, that there was some warrior or chief named "Kicking Horse" and that we should rename the pass to give it a proper pronounciation in the native language. I've seen people protest about this (1990s, pre-wikipedia) and try to locate the historical person of which there are a few with that name. The reality is that one of the guys surveying the pass was literally kicked by his horse. No translation needed.
On the other hand, there are terms like eigenvector/eigenvalue, which literally mean "own"-vector/"own"-value in German. When I first learned that they still have the "eigen" prefix when translated to English, I immediately assumed that they are named after some mathematician named Eigen. To my surprise, that was not the case -- for some reason, mathematicians did indeed decide to use the German word for "own" as a prefix.
Going 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.
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.
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…
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…
In electromagnetism, the Poynting vector, the directional flux of an electromagnetic wave, is named after John Henry Poynting.
Suitland and Beltsville, MD - suburbs of DC named after local landowners, Samuel T. Suit and Truman Belt.
In my hometown there's a shop with two big signs: "Puertas Motos" and "Motos Puertas". I've always passed by too fast, by car, so I can't tell if it's some guy whose name is Puertas selling motorbikes or some guy called Motos selling doors.
That's awesome! Is it in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain? If so, I just looked it up and vg ybbxf yvxr gurl ner n qbbe naq jvaqbj fhccyl fgber, juvpu vf gb fnl gur frpbaq bs lbhe gjb cbffvovyvgvrf. (I don't want to spoil it for you if you're enjoying the ambiguity.)
Edit: looked it up and it's a guy named Motos selling doors :-)
https://www.paginasamarillas.es/f/chiclana-de-la-frontera/pu...
Vacaville, CA - vaca is Spanish for cow, and is home to cattle ranches. Despite many people thinking that it means "cow town", it's actually named for the settler Juan Manuel Cabeza Vaca.