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Things Unexpectedly Named After People

notes.rolandcrosby.com

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Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#161

Post by JadeNB »

giomasce wrote: post #74

Buses 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 desig…

> Buses 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.

Known in the US as the eponym of sleeper cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_(car_or_coach) .

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#162

Post by jfk13 »

swyx wrote: post #17

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.

It's pretty sad that "rebecca" is misspelled in the css-tricks.com URL.

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#163

Post by JadeNB »

llimos wrote: post #77

French 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.

> Named after British general John French.

Who drove me crazy in an audiobook I listened to recently on WWI, whose author, one can only assume intentionally, kept deploying phrases like (very roughly paraphrased from memory) "As a British officer, French hated and distrusted the French, who resented being commanded by a Briton."

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#164

Post by runxel »

unterbahn wrote: post #160

:-) fun. Tnx for sharing. Bluetooth: tenth-century king Harald Bluetooth united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom. (re: uniting communication protocols) I guess it's not so surprising bc why the heck is it named after a tooth (had been thinking... the shape of a Bluetooth dongle? Lol) but still, this is a pretty obscure ref.

Also the Bluetooth "logo" is actually just the signet of king Bluetooth.

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#165

Post by TomMarius »

tgb wrote: post #105
mkl wrote: post #24

My favourite is the Heaviside function [1], which is named after Oliver Heaviside [2], who just happened to have an appropriate name for a function with one heavy side! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_step_function [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

Or Čech cohomology, usually denoted with the check "v" above characters.

(Čech means "a Czech person")

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#166

Post by russellbeattie »

My favorite example: Dunce.

From Wikipedia: "Duns Scotus wrote treatises on theology, grammar, logic and metaphysics, which were widely influential throughout Western Europe... The followers of Duns Scotus were called the Dunses, Dunsmen, or Scotists. When in the sixteenth century the Scotists argued against Renaissance humanism, the term duns or dunce became, in the mouths of the Protestants, a term of abuse and a synonym for one incapable of scholarship."

This is similar to how people call others "Einstein" when they do something stupid.

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#167

Post by delecti »

javajosh wrote: post #117
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…

Nice. As an aside, how do you pronounce Heaviside? Is it hevy-side or heevy-side or...?

From the IPA pronunciation guide of Oliver Heaviside's wikipedia page (mouse over the bit in parenthesis right after his name at the top of the page), "heavy side", with a slight emphasis on the first syllable of "heavy".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People

#169

Post by russellbeattie »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #86
devenson wrote: post #50

If 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.

The female name is normally spelled "Portia", from the main character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Haven't you ever seen A Fish Called Wanda??
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