Gardenias are not so named for being beautiful in a garden.
Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
321–330 of 346 posts
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#322One of my favorites is that the creator of Pilates was a guy named Joe Pilates. It’s like if the inventor of yoga was named Vivek Yoga (which is not the case, to be clear.)
And not Pontius
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#323The generic Hungarian word for trash cans, 'kuka', unexpectedly originates from the names of German industrialists Johann Josef Keller and Jakob Knappich. The story is quite involved, to the extent that one would be tempted to dismiss it as a folk etymology, if it wasn't ridiculously well-attested. Keller and Knappich founded an acetylene factory in Augsburg, Bavaria in 1898. They named it Keller und Knappich Augsbur…
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…
"Sabiro" for a suit comes from "Savile Row", a street in London famous for its tailor shops, which in turn is named after Dorothy Boyle, Countess of Burlington and Cork (née Savile).
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#324The names of Airport Codes is truly interesting as well. Basically early airports were farms and fields, and thus the airport code reflected the original famrland owners' name. There isa book on the history of names of all places in California, and similarly, the names of places are who was effectively the earliest documented land owner of that area, or something from the native tribes.
Anyway.. this article starts its history later than what I was refering to...
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-airports-get-their-code...
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#325This reminds me of two (that I'm aware of, there may be more) street names in Munich that appear to be named after places but are actually named after people named after places : Passauerstraße (named after the leader of a peasant uprising rather than the city Passau) and Dessauerstraße (named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_I,_Prince_of_Anhalt-De... rather than the city Dessau) - the only clue being that…
Also Gärtnerplatz, named after the famed architect Friedrich von Gärtner.
Fun fact: The Gärtnerplatz is located on the street Klenzestraße, which is named after the other famous architect and von Gärtner's rival, Leo von Klenze.
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#326Canada geese are named after John Canada, which I didn’t expect.
I was surprised by this too! I tried (briefly) to find a source, but it seems to be an urban legend:
https://www.answers.com/Q/How_did_Canada_geese_get_their_nam...
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
English is definitely not an outlier. In french it's Rayon X
I had a moment to check and it’s actually interesting - looks like the world is split in two. Looking at a few languages closer to home (for me) we have: X-ray-like: English, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Turkish, Portuguese Röntgen-like: German, Danish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Russian, Hungarian There’s way more of each than I’ve listed, of course. I just picked a few languages
X-Strahlen (X-Rays) is the name Röntgen invented for his discovery :)
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#328At some point Monty also said he had /my/ directory on his dev system which when had /sql/ for where what later became MySQL was developed.
It is quite possibly it is both... we often can name things first and when come up with fitting storie later.
MaxDB, MaxScale, MariaDB, Maria (storage engine) though were all named for children... to continue the pattern.
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#329A few more examples: King Street in Hammersmith, London, was named after John King, Bishop of London in 17th century. [0] Neanderthals were named after Joachim Neumann, a 17th century clergyman and composer who Latinised his surname to Neander (both literally meaning "new man"). He particularly loved a certain valley near Düsseldorf, so much in fact that it was renamed "Neandert(h)al" after him. [1] Sideburns, a once…
Surely Neanderthals were named after Neandertal where they were first discovered, but Neandertal itself was named after Mr. Neander?
Re: Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)
#330Alexandria, VA (upscale historic suburb of DC, near Mt. Vernon). Captain Phillip Alexander II, a random guy who happened to own the land. Not named after the city in Egypt.
... which was named after the Macedonian dude.