301–310 of 346 posts
Discussed at the time: Things Unexpectedly Named After People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725 - July 2020 (289 comments)
I wonder how much this was a "thing unexpectedly named after a person" vs. a case of nominative determinism.
If my last name were Price, I tell you, from the moment I understood the potential implications, I'd be vaguely considering becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business focused on low prices in some way or another — just so I could make the pun.
This one is a bit too niche but I love it: In Quebec, there is a tax one pays to your municipality upon the purchase of a house called the "Taxe de Bienvenue". This translates to "Welcome Tax", which it commonly is called by anglos. Many clever folks might overhear you call it that and say "Welll actuuallyy it is named after a minister by the name of Jean Bienvenue, and so that translation is incorrect". Well, it tur…
Well yeah, I guess the perverse naming (having to pay a tax isn't really likely to make you feel welcome) led people to look for alternative explanations...
Ticketmaster has "convenience fees" — if you don't pay them, you don't get "convenience." Well, if you don't pay the "welcome" tax, then you won't get "welcomed" (i.e. made able to live there.)
(I guess maybe it's intuitive to me because I see municipalities as private corporations like any other, that have ultimate authority on whether people get to live on their incorporated land. By default, you're not "welcome" to own land in a city! The city has to decide that!)
At the opposite end of things, here's Stigler's law of eponymy[0]. This "law" states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. It was discovered by Robert K. Merton. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy
You might think Morgan Hill, California was named because of a prominent feature of the landscape. Nope, named after a guy named Morgan Hill. (And the hill you see in Morgan Hill, CA is actually named El Toro — the Spanish word for "lawnmower". Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here for one more night.)
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The most common word in Japanese for “stapler” is hochikisu or hotchikisu , which seems to come from the name of the E.F. Hotchkiss Company [1], an American manufacturer whose staplers were imported to Japan in the early 20th century. Some Japanese sources [2] say that the word comes from Benjamin Hotchkiss [3], an inventor of machine guns, and that is what I learned many years ago, but that etymology apparently has…
X rays are called Rentogen in Japanese, after Wilhelm Röntgen, who produced/detected them first.
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Excellent point! In fact it's both - "neo" from Latin and "ander" from Greek. And I stand corrected on another point: it was actually his grandfather who changed the name, so our Joachim actually was born Neander.
Um actually, neo is Greek as well. (Latin would be some form of nov- .)
German chocolate cake, per Wikipedia, "Originating in the United States, it was named after English-American chocolate maker Samuel German".
Funnily enough I know this desert by its translated name to Hungarian as "Német csokoládé torta".