6 ms·

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 Civ

by air7 6y ago

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 Mountain, Victoria : No lake. Named after George Lake, who was the Surveyor-General of the area including the mountain. [*] Search for the relevant comment for more info and references.

javajosh 6y ago
Nice. As an aside, how do you pronounce Heaviside? Is it hevy-side or heevy-side or...?
- jrh206 6y ago
  Heavy side - it’s a pun
- function_seven 6y ago
  My first interpretation was heveh-side or hevi-side. I have no idea what the correct pronunciation is. But between you and me, I think we have some viable candidates.
- n4r9 6y ago
  At university in the UK it was always pronounced heavy-side.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    Same. I guess I'll continue saying it that way. But I always feel so awkward about it!
- delecti 6y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside
air7 6y ago
Sadly, I can't edit the comment anymore. Here are a few more. - German Chocolate Cake - Named after the English-American chocolate maker Samuel German. - Baker's Chocolate (popular American brand of baking chocolate) - Named after Dr. William Baker - Loop subdivision (CG term) - Named after its inventor Charles Loop. - French Hill (neighborhood in Jerusalem) - Named after British general John French. (Disputed) - Mobile Homes (my absolute favorite) - Named after their place of fabrication, Mobile Alabama. Bonus fact (mine): The product's original name (that sadly didn't catch on) was "Sweet Homes" after their inventor James Sweet! And The 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd hit “Sweet Home Alabama” was a reworking of a 1951 radio jingle advertising “Sweet Homes, Alabama.”
- bb2018 6y ago
  According to Snopes, the song "Sweet Home Alabama" was actually inspired by a radio commercial for "Sweet Homes" that had aired decades earlier. Full circle.
  - hannasanarion 6y ago
    You fell for a Snopes TRoLL. They made that story up. Mobile homes are called that because they can move. There was never a mobile home company called "sweet homes", and the industry does not originate in Mobile.
    - mherdeg 6y ago
      The ultimate troll entry for me on Snopes is: > So how did this claim arise? In a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of “facts” that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous “facts,” among which was the statistic cited above about the average person’s swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst’s propagation of this false “fact” has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet. This is NOT in their "TroLL" section -- it is not clearly marked as being a fake fact. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/ . Yet if you do the homework -- other people have, and I have tried to reproduce it myself -- there is no such source. See https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-writer-named-lisa-holst-responsible-for-the-belief-that-everyone-eats-eight https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-write... for example. This Snopes article cites a column reportedly called "Reading Is Believing" from a periodical called "PC Professional", page 71, date 7 January 1993. I was unable to find the existence of any such periodical although there is "PC professionnel", published in German, ISSN 0939-5822, whose archives seem to only be available in German libraries (and I have not reviewed those). However, I was able to find in the Cornell University archives, a quarterly periodical called the Cornell Engineer, which carried a column by a student columnist dated April 1992 (Volume 56 number 2, page 24, column title "Stress and Strain", author Margot Anne-Stephanie Vigeant '94). That seems to predate the January 1993 citation given in the Snopes article, and the 1992 student-publication column text says in part > My first topic for this issue is worries. I've decided that there are just too many well adjusted, un-paranoid people in this school (NOT), so I've decided to wreck their peace of mind by sharing a list of my favorite worries with them. These are the kind of things that just jump into your mind right before you're about to fall asleep - horrible little night gremlins whose goal it is to keep you up just a little bit longer. So here they are, hope you can sleep after this: > The average person swallows eight spiders while sleeping, in their lifetime. What if all eight show up tonight? Meanwhile the source that Snopes apparently made up, Lisa Birgit Holst, is an anagram for "This is a big troll". It's just odd. Their debunking contains a pointless lie; there is a real citation available they chose not to use.
mauvehaus 6y ago
Student’s T-test/distribution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test
davycro 6y ago
Adidas = Adi Dassler
- netsharc 6y ago
  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..
  - jefftk 6y ago
    It wasn't obviously a name to me. Next you'll say Nike is a name!
    - lmm 6y ago
      Not sure if you were trying to make a joke, but Nike is the Greek goddess of victory.
      - 83457 6y ago
        What a coincidence!
    - netsharc 6y ago
      What's "Adidas" to you then? the examples show nouns or adjectives that turn out to be the inventor's name (like PageRank, you think it's from "web pages", but oh, it's from "Larry Page", or "Main Street", where you think it's because it's the primary street, but oh, it's actually named after a Mr. Main). So what noun or adjective is "Adidas"? I'm going to complain about being downvoted and I'm gonna grumpily say even HN isn't immune to anti-intellectualism...
      - jefftk 6y ago
        I had thought both Adidas and Nike were made up words, like Kodak.
  - 6y ago
salmonellaeater 6y ago
One I'm fond of is Angel Falls[1] in Venezuela, named after aviator Jimmie Angel. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls
arcticbull 6y ago
Millbrae, California (suburb of San Francisco-San Jose right next to SFO) is a conjunction of Mill and 'brae.' Mill refers to Darius Ogden Mills (at one point the richest person in California) who purchased the land in 1860 and brae is a Scottish word for "rolling hills". [1] Longyearbyen in Svalbard (Longyear Town), the main settlement, is named after John Monro Longyear, an American coal magnate from Michigan [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbrae,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbrae,_California [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen
robsyme 6y ago
A potential addition: - Pink Lake [1] in Quebec, Canada named for the Pink family who cleared land in the area. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Lake_(Canada) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Lake_(Canada)
BerislavLopac 6y ago
There is also a King Street in London's Hammersmith. The surprising bit is that, in a city full of places named after various monarch, it was named after bishop John King.
yibg 6y ago
French's mustard -> Robert Timothy French.
siddharth-mv 6y ago
Waterfall Glen, a forest preserve outside Chicago, IL, has a waterfall but is named after Seymour Waterfall. https://www.dupageforest.org/places-to-go/forest-preserves/waterfall-glen https://www.dupageforest.org/places-to-go/forest-preserves/w...

by air7 6y ago

javajosh 6y ago

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

jrh206 6y ago
Heavy side - it’s a pun
function_seven 6y ago
My first interpretation was heveh-side or hevi-side. I have no idea what the correct pronunciation is. But between you and me, I think we have some viable candidates.
n4r9 6y ago
At university in the UK it was always pronounced heavy-side.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Same. I guess I'll continue saying it that way. But I always feel so awkward about it!
delecti 6y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

air7 6y ago

Sadly, I can't edit the comment anymore. Here are a few more. - German Chocolate Cake - Named after the English-American chocolate maker Samuel German. - Baker's Chocolate (popular American brand of baking chocolate) - Named after Dr. William Baker - Loop subdivision (CG term) - Named after its inventor Charles Loop. - French Hill (neighborhood in Jerusalem) - Named after British general John French. (Disputed) - Mobile Homes (my absolute favorite) - Named after their place of fabrication, Mobile Alabama. Bonus fact (mine): The product's original name (that sadly didn't catch on) was "Sweet Homes" after their inventor James Sweet! And The 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd hit “Sweet Home Alabama” was a reworking of a 1951 radio jingle advertising “Sweet Homes, Alabama.”

bb2018 6y ago
According to Snopes, the song "Sweet Home Alabama" was actually inspired by a radio commercial for "Sweet Homes" that had aired decades earlier. Full circle.
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  You fell for a Snopes TRoLL. They made that story up. Mobile homes are called that because they can move. There was never a mobile home company called "sweet homes", and the industry does not originate in Mobile.
  - mherdeg 6y ago
    The ultimate troll entry for me on Snopes is: > So how did this claim arise? In a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of “facts” that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous “facts,” among which was the statistic cited above about the average person’s swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst’s propagation of this false “fact” has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet. This is NOT in their "TroLL" section -- it is not clearly marked as being a fake fact. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/ . Yet if you do the homework -- other people have, and I have tried to reproduce it myself -- there is no such source. See https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-writer-named-lisa-holst-responsible-for-the-belief-that-everyone-eats-eight https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-write... for example. This Snopes article cites a column reportedly called "Reading Is Believing" from a periodical called "PC Professional", page 71, date 7 January 1993. I was unable to find the existence of any such periodical although there is "PC professionnel", published in German, ISSN 0939-5822, whose archives seem to only be available in German libraries (and I have not reviewed those). However, I was able to find in the Cornell University archives, a quarterly periodical called the Cornell Engineer, which carried a column by a student columnist dated April 1992 (Volume 56 number 2, page 24, column title "Stress and Strain", author Margot Anne-Stephanie Vigeant '94). That seems to predate the January 1993 citation given in the Snopes article, and the 1992 student-publication column text says in part > My first topic for this issue is worries. I've decided that there are just too many well adjusted, un-paranoid people in this school (NOT), so I've decided to wreck their peace of mind by sharing a list of my favorite worries with them. These are the kind of things that just jump into your mind right before you're about to fall asleep - horrible little night gremlins whose goal it is to keep you up just a little bit longer. So here they are, hope you can sleep after this: > The average person swallows eight spiders while sleeping, in their lifetime. What if all eight show up tonight? Meanwhile the source that Snopes apparently made up, Lisa Birgit Holst, is an anagram for "This is a big troll". It's just odd. Their debunking contains a pointless lie; there is a real citation available they chose not to use.

mauvehaus 6y ago

Student’s T-test/distribution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test

davycro 6y ago

Adidas = Adi Dassler

netsharc 6y ago
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..
- jefftk 6y ago
  It wasn't obviously a name to me. Next you'll say Nike is a name!
  - lmm 6y ago
    Not sure if you were trying to make a joke, but Nike is the Greek goddess of victory.
    - 83457 6y ago
      What a coincidence!
  - netsharc 6y ago
    What's "Adidas" to you then? the examples show nouns or adjectives that turn out to be the inventor's name (like PageRank, you think it's from "web pages", but oh, it's from "Larry Page", or "Main Street", where you think it's because it's the primary street, but oh, it's actually named after a Mr. Main). So what noun or adjective is "Adidas"? I'm going to complain about being downvoted and I'm gonna grumpily say even HN isn't immune to anti-intellectualism...
    - jefftk 6y ago
      I had thought both Adidas and Nike were made up words, like Kodak.
- 6y ago

salmonellaeater 6y ago

One I'm fond of is Angel Falls[1] in Venezuela, named after aviator Jimmie Angel. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls

arcticbull 6y ago

Millbrae, California (suburb of San Francisco-San Jose right next to SFO) is a conjunction of Mill and 'brae.' Mill refers to Darius Ogden Mills (at one point the richest person in California) who purchased the land in 1860 and brae is a Scottish word for "rolling hills". [1] Longyearbyen in Svalbard (Longyear Town), the main settlement, is named after John Monro Longyear, an American coal magnate from Michigan [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbrae,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbrae,_California [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen

robsyme 6y ago

A potential addition: - Pink Lake [1] in Quebec, Canada named for the Pink family who cleared land in the area. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Lake_(Canada) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Lake_(Canada)

BerislavLopac 6y ago

There is also a King Street in London's Hammersmith. The surprising bit is that, in a city full of places named after various monarch, it was named after bishop John King.

yibg 6y ago

French's mustard -> Robert Timothy French.

siddharth-mv 6y ago

Waterfall Glen, a forest preserve outside Chicago, IL, has a waterfall but is named after Seymour Waterfall. https://www.dupageforest.org/places-to-go/forest-preserves/waterfall-glen https://www.dupageforest.org/places-to-go/forest-preserves/w...