Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or Čech cohomology, usually denoted with the check "v" above characters.
(Čech means "a Czech person")
I thought so, but thanks for doubleczeching.
Things Unexpectedly Named After People
221–230 of 294 posts
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't belong in the category, since it's obviously a name. If it were called "Running Shoes" because the company founder was named "Running", then it would belong..
It wasn't obviously a name to me. Next you'll say Nike is a name!
Not sure if you were trying to make a joke, but Nike is the Greek goddess of victory.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#223Bluetooth, a union of different communication protocols, after King Harold Bluetooth, 10th century uniter of Danish tribes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Name
It's almost an insult to his legacy.
It should be named after a slow, cumbersome, finicky and controversial leader who occasionally brought things together, but only temporarily.
Cromwell would suffice
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#224Fuchsia is named after Leonhart Fuchs, which makes it much easier to spell once you know. Tarmac is an abbreviation of tarmacadam, which is named for John Loudon McAdam. It’s also where the verb “macadamisation” comes from, which is a great word.
Guess I’m pronouncing it fooks-ia from now on…
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#225There 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 situa…
I agree with your distinction, but for a long time I wrongly believed the -ian in Debian was a suffix meaning "relating to" as in reptilian or antediluvian. I didn't have a guess what the first part meant, but I thought it might be a nonsense syllable.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#226This phenomenon exists in the German language as well. The "Schwarzschild" in Schwarzschild radius literally means "black shield", but it is in fact named after Karl Schwarzschild. 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 th…
Going by Wikipedia titles, English seems to be the odd one out when it comes to eigenvectors. E.g.:
* Swedish: egenvektor
* Spanish: vector propio/autovectore
* Italian: autovettore
* Finnish: ominaisvektori
* Turkish: özvektör
I think autovector would have been a good English term.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#227In Austin, Texas there is a high school football stadium called House Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Park). For many years I assumed that house meant something like venue. (In theater, there is house lighting. And restaurants serve house wine.)
But it's actually named after Edward M. House, a political figure who donated the land.
There's also a Slaughter Lane. This being Texas, one might guess it is a road to a slaughterhouse, but it's named after the Slaughter family who were early settlers in the region.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#228I 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…
A potential addition:
- Pink Lake [1] in Quebec, Canada named for the Pink family who cleared land in the area.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#229We have a downhill course that car clubs use for a hilk climb, called Mary Hill. Makes after Sam Hill's daughter Mary Hill.
Re: Things Unexpectedly Named After People
#230Also, the term "Guy" which is an eponym for Guy Fawkes https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/guy#Etymology_1
When I first encountered that in a Facebook post, I was skeptical but since I happened to be at the library at the time and mere feet away from a hardcopy OED. The OED corroborated it.