That's not a real thing! Crap's a very old world, and according to Wikipedia "crapper" was first attested in a roughly modern sense when Sir Crapper was only about 10, well before his overflowing flush to prominence in the plumbing world.
Oh it's the Finnish girl's name, like Little My from the Moomins. That is definitely an improvement, reading it as the possessive pronoun makes it look like the name of some pushy preinstalled crapware. YourSQLExperience. EnjoyData. MyCloudStorageIDidntAskFor.
First of all the name My is (Finland-)Swedish, the Finnish name of the character is Pikku Myy.
The Finnish name registry contains only ~2 mentions before the publication of the hugely popular first Moomin book (and none for Myy) so this girls' name and hence the name in the MySQL really comes from the Moomin stories.
And finally, the name of Little My is a play on the Greek small letter mu, i.e. μ, and you'd be closer to the real idea and original pronunciation if you thought of it as MuSQL (μSQL) instead ;)
> The term gasoline originated from the trademark terms Cazeline and Gazeline, which were stylized spellings and pronunciations of Cassell, the surname of British businessman John Cassell, who, on 27 November 1862, placed the following fuel-oil advertisement in The Times of London:
> > The Patent Cazeline Oil, safe, economical, and brilliant [...] possesses all the requisites which have so long been desired as a means of powerful artificial light.[12]
> That 19th-century advert is the earliest occurrence of Cassell's trademark word, Cazelline, to identify automobile fuel. In the course of business, he learned that the Dublin shopkeeper Samuel Boyd was selling a counterfeit version of the fuel cazeline, and, in writing, Cassell asked Boyd to cease and desist selling fuel using his trademark. Boyd did not reply, and Cassell changed the spelling of the trademark name of his fuel cazelline by changing the initial letter C to the letter G, thus coining the word gazeline.[13] By 1863, North American English usage had re-spelled the word gazeline into the word gasolene, by 1864, the gasoline spelling was the common usage. In place of the word gasoline, most Commonwealth countries (except Canada), use the term "petrol", and North Americans more often use "gas" in common parlance, hence the prevalence of the usage "gas bar" or "gas station" in Canada and the United States.[14]
That seems pretty expected. If you’d asked me to guess where the word diesel came from, I probably would have guessed a name. Compare that to German chocolate cake, which seems preposterous.
German's Chocolate Cake is probably a better name for it. I knew something as up with that one the first time I met a german person and they had never heard of my favorite cake. Baker's chocolate was a surprise to me though, I've always made my German's Chocolate Cake with Baker's chocolate...
Context for non-New Yorkers: Outerbridge is the southernmost bridge in NYC and New York State, and Staten Island might as well be on Mars for the rest of the city. So the name "Outerbridge" is all the more fitting (and surprising).
The George Washington Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing both connect New York City (on the east) with New Jersey (on the west) but are about 45 minutes apart, even with no traffic.
The other NYC bridges are all (I think?) named Bridge, but they went with Crossing here because Outerbridge Bridge sounds weird.
Another NYC one: A lot of people think "major" in The Major Deegan Expressway means it is a significant expressway, but actually the expressway is named after (Army) Major William Deegan
Maybe I'm weird but I think NYC area has numerous semi-poetic sounding roads (while most of the country just uses route numbers): Harlem River Drive, Cross Bronx, Major Deegan, Van Wyck, Belt Parkway, Grand Central Parkway, the Taconic, Palisades Parkway, the B.Q.E., the Sprain Brook. Plus the Verrazano and Tappan Zee.
Houston does the same with its highways, and, in fact, they have different names depending on their relation to downtown. For example, I-45 is both the Gulf Freeway and North Freeway, 59 is both Eastex and Southwest.
Austin also has named highways (Mopac, Capital of Texas, Research), except I-35, which I was once told was because "it was the only one not created locally."
"Unexpectedly named after people". Erlang seems to be short for for Ericsson Language, Elo is often misspelled ELO as if it stands for something. Shrapnel is less unexpected.
Vibra-, idio-, membrano-, aero-, etc. are existing or obvious prefixes. Sax- is not. All I can think of is Saxon, but saxophones are pretty recent, so that doesn't match.
Sousaphone is another -phone that's pretty obviously named after a person. Less well known but still pretty obvious are rothphone, heckelphone, sarrusophone, sudrophone.
In the case of shrapnel I guess I always assumed it was derived from some World War era Germanic word for metal scrap/shards, so that it's just named after a British dude is pretty unexpected to me.
They seem entirely expected, or at least not unexpected. Reading them doesn't lead you to assume some alternate obvious but wrong explanation. Imagine learning (made up example) that the musical triangle was named for it's inventor, "Stuart Triangle".
San Francisco’s “Main Street” is in no way a major artery, however. Market Street served that function.
Here’s an 1853 map https://rumsey.geogarage.com/maps/g3463000.html in which today’s Main Street is only a block long. The map calls it Front St, although there’s another Front St nearby which kept the name – perhaps it was renamed Main to disambiguate once the streets connected?
I worked on Main for years and nobody mentioned this urban legend. while the street is not long, I would not put it past bureaucrats to name a random street Main
That map also showcases another example of this - Townsend Street is named after one James Townsend, who was the alcalde [1] in 1848, not for its location at the end of town. (Geary, Leavenworth, and Bryant are also named for pre-statehood alcaldes, but their names are less amusingly coincidental.)
It could (conceivably) be that "in San Francisco" is meant literally, and that in San Francisco it's true, even if not the case for other instances of "Main Street" elsewhere, however; a cursory web search leads me to think "urban legend" is by far the more likely. It's always been my understanding that "Main Street" either is currently, or was at some time nearer the town / city's beginning the main street that went through "downtown".
It is literally true specifically for San Francisco. The street now named Main in San Francisco didn't exist for the first few decades after the city's founding and grid-laying (it was underwater, just off shore in San Francisco Bay!), and at no point has it been a street of any particular prominence.
Yes, but the Main St. in San Francisco hasn't been around nearly as long as SF has. When the downtown grids were laid out, what's now Main St. was underwater. It didn't exist as land, let alone a road that was either significant or central. By the time it was filled in, it was home to Charles Main's mining provision shop.
The other way you can tell that it's not "main" is that it's parallel to 1st Street. Most cities don't have both a Main and a 1st, they have one or the other (which is why "Second Street" is the second-most common street name in the United States behind "Main", with "First" coming in third place). If SF were using Main in the "normal" sense, it would be where 1st is, next to 2nd. Failing that, it would at least be the next block over from 1st, so that 1st was counting from it. Washington, DC, sort of works that way, where there's a "zero street" (North/South Capitol), and then 1st is the next block over. But... SF's Main St. is a full three blocks from 1st. It's just kind of in the middle of nowhere, logically speaking. And that's again because of the landfill situation - 1st St. is the first full block counting from the shoreline at the time the streets were built.
In the heart of the Georgian city of Bath we have 3 streets designed by the architect John Wood.
The streets are named Quiet St, John St and Wood St. It is claimed that the naming of these streets is based on the 3 words most regularly used in the clearly passionate council meetings of the time.
"Silhouette" was a surprise when I'd learned of it a few years back.
The backstory: he was a financial minister and an advocate of austerity, such that when the practice of creating simple, cheap, shadow-profile head portraits of people emerged, his name was applied to them.
Borders Books (for anyone who remembers it) was named after founders Tom and Louis Borders. Louis went on to found Webvan (for anyone who remembers that).
The thing that made it unexpected in my case is that “borders” is an English word and was not previously known to me as a name. I was surprised and amused when I learned it was an eponym. That puts it in the same category as the other examples on this site, at least from my perspective.
"this thing" is things unexpectedly named after people. "Borders" is an English word not in very popular use as a name; "Borders Books and Music" sounds more like it's of a piece with something like "Encore Books" than, as it turns out actually to be, with "Barnes & Noble Booksellers". So it's unexpectedly named after people.
There used to be TV commercials for a piece of fitness equipment called the Ab Doer. It was supposedly created by John Abdo. I’m still not sure but as far as I can tell he was a real guy and that was his real name.
Interesting, because it highlights that from the beginning boycotts were morally fraught, and even the first (?) boycott involved violence against non-participants.
The main point is the list are things named after people who's etymology is utterly unexpected and surprising. It's like if the Rocky mountains were named after William Rocky.
The teddy bear was named after Theodore Roosevelt (The president of the USA), after saving a baby bear during a hunting expedition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear)
"Saving" makes it sound like the bear survived, which is not what actually happened:
> A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he shoot it [...] Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery
I also love places that are named after someone and it's slightly amusing/horrifying.
Harold Holt was the Australian Prime Minister in the 1960's, and went for a swim and went missing (yes, there are many, MANY local conspiracies this :)). So what did we do? Named a swimming pool[0] after him (construction actually started before his death, I believe).
It is generally agreed that Holt's disappearance was a simple case of an accidental drowning, but a number of conspiracy theories surfaced, most famously the suggestion that he was a spy from the People's Republic of China and had been collected by a Chinese submarine.
345 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 264 ms ] threadFirst of all the name My is (Finland-)Swedish, the Finnish name of the character is Pikku Myy.
The Finnish name registry contains only ~2 mentions before the publication of the hugely popular first Moomin book (and none for Myy) so this girls' name and hence the name in the MySQL really comes from the Moomin stories.
And finally, the name of Little My is a play on the Greek small letter mu, i.e. μ, and you'd be closer to the real idea and original pronunciation if you thought of it as MuSQL (μSQL) instead ;)
Roughly speaking, the <y> here is close to what is traditionally transcribed in English as [i:], except rounded, i.e. [y:].
Many caveats apply, this probably being Finnish Swedish (which should have the same or a similar vowel), my Swedish being rather rudimentary, etc.
> The term gasoline originated from the trademark terms Cazeline and Gazeline, which were stylized spellings and pronunciations of Cassell, the surname of British businessman John Cassell, who, on 27 November 1862, placed the following fuel-oil advertisement in The Times of London:
> > The Patent Cazeline Oil, safe, economical, and brilliant [...] possesses all the requisites which have so long been desired as a means of powerful artificial light.[12]
> That 19th-century advert is the earliest occurrence of Cassell's trademark word, Cazelline, to identify automobile fuel. In the course of business, he learned that the Dublin shopkeeper Samuel Boyd was selling a counterfeit version of the fuel cazeline, and, in writing, Cassell asked Boyd to cease and desist selling fuel using his trademark. Boyd did not reply, and Cassell changed the spelling of the trademark name of his fuel cazelline by changing the initial letter C to the letter G, thus coining the word gazeline.[13] By 1863, North American English usage had re-spelled the word gazeline into the word gasolene, by 1864, the gasoline spelling was the common usage. In place of the word gasoline, most Commonwealth countries (except Canada), use the term "petrol", and North Americans more often use "gas" in common parlance, hence the prevalence of the usage "gas bar" or "gas station" in Canada and the United States.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
There aren’t a lot of names that end with tt, other than the given name “Matt”
Another NYC one: A lot of people think "major" in The Major Deegan Expressway means it is a significant expressway, but actually the expressway is named after (Army) Major William Deegan
Austin also has named highways (Mopac, Capital of Texas, Research), except I-35, which I was once told was because "it was the only one not created locally."
The outer-most bridge!
The fact that it is named after the first PANYNJ president (Mr. Outerbridge) is amazing.
It’s like discovering that “Last Gas Station for 40 miles” is owned by Mr. Laststationfortymiles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apgar_score
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Macadam
sadism - the Marquis de Sade
masochism - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
How are these different from e.g. erlang, elo or shrapnel - all featured on the page?
And yes I am a great party guest!
Sadism and masochism - perhaps less unexpected, but no less than shrapnel IMO.
Sousaphone is another -phone that's pretty obviously named after a person. Less well known but still pretty obvious are rothphone, heckelphone, sarrusophone, sudrophone.
https://mountainviewpeople.blogspot.com/2007/09/charles-main...
Here are some more interesting ones...
* Mason jar was named after John Landis Mason, 19th century American tinsmith
* Guppy (fish) was named after Robert John Lechmere Guppy, 19th century British naturalist
* Silhouette was named after Étienne de Silhouette, 18th century French politican
* Bloomers (women's clothing) was named after Amelia Bloomer, 19th century American women's right advocate
* T&T Supermarket (Canadian supermarket chain) was named after Tina and Tiffany, daughters of the founder, Cindy Lee
* Bluetooth was named after Harald Bluetooth, 10th century king of Denmark
Things NOT named after people:
* "Aberration" has nothing to do with Ernst Abbe, optics scientist who wrote about chromatic aberrations. It comes from the Latin root.
I feel this might be a bit of a cheeky urban legend, or at the very least a coincidence.
"Main st" has been used in western city's and towns for a lot longer than SF has been around.
Here’s an 1853 map https://rumsey.geogarage.com/maps/g3463000.html in which today’s Main Street is only a block long. The map calls it Front St, although there’s another Front St nearby which kept the name – perhaps it was renamed Main to disambiguate once the streets connected?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcalde
It’s a good street, Brent.
(There’s actually good motorcycle parking just off Market I used to use all the time when I worked downtown.)
The other way you can tell that it's not "main" is that it's parallel to 1st Street. Most cities don't have both a Main and a 1st, they have one or the other (which is why "Second Street" is the second-most common street name in the United States behind "Main", with "First" coming in third place). If SF were using Main in the "normal" sense, it would be where 1st is, next to 2nd. Failing that, it would at least be the next block over from 1st, so that 1st was counting from it. Washington, DC, sort of works that way, where there's a "zero street" (North/South Capitol), and then 1st is the next block over. But... SF's Main St. is a full three blocks from 1st. It's just kind of in the middle of nowhere, logically speaking. And that's again because of the landfill situation - 1st St. is the first full block counting from the shoreline at the time the streets were built.
The streets are named Quiet St, John St and Wood St. It is claimed that the naming of these streets is based on the 3 words most regularly used in the clearly passionate council meetings of the time.
The backstory: he was a financial minister and an advocate of austerity, such that when the practice of creating simple, cheap, shadow-profile head portraits of people emerged, his name was applied to them.
-self-appointed policeman of this thing
Am I being detained, Mr. Policeman?
But now that you mention it, this fact is not at all obvious from the name.
And I was horrified when I learned that lynching is named after someone, and a perpetrator at that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott
> A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he shoot it [...] Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery
Harold Holt was the Australian Prime Minister in the 1960's, and went for a swim and went missing (yes, there are many, MANY local conspiracies this :)). So what did we do? Named a swimming pool[0] after him (construction actually started before his death, I believe).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt_Memorial_Swimming_...
Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Ha...
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Harold_Holt