2473: Cleveland Guardians Sep 19, 2021
Unlike with the Washington Football Team which moved to remove its old name of the Washington Redskins and went with a temporary name (still in use) the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians in 2021, and at the same time announced their new logo, and mascots. Many had predicted other named, including the Cleveland Spiders, a name used over 110 years ago for a Cleveland baseball team, but in the end it was named for the Guardian of Traffic statues in the city.
2458: German Cake: Not Named for Germany Sep 4, 2021
The sort of chocolate cake known as 'German cake' is not only invented in America, but wasn't even supposed to be named after the country of Germany. Plenty of foods are named for their supposed region of origin like 'French fries' but in this case it was just named after a man Samuel German who started the Baker's Chocolate Company who named it "Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate".
2457: Solomon Sep 3, 2021
The Hebrew given name שלמה (Shlomo) is Solomon in English, and features this extra terminal -N in most other languages except Jewish ones like Yiddish. Even in the fellow Semitic language of Arabic it is →سُلَيْمَان (Suleimān) this is present. This is because of the Greek influence over the other major sources of the name's wider adoption like Latin and Syriac Aramaic, with Greek adding a '-on' suffix which was just retained elsewhere. Between Latin in the Christian world and Arabic in the Muslim world, many languages of totally variant language families have this terminal -N, with a notable exception of Spanish which got its version (Zulema) from Arabic.
2405: Shell Group Name Jul 20, 2021
The name for the Shell Corporation, officially Royal Dutch Shell Group, does not have so much relation between the products its involved with and the symbol. It was in the 19th century, however, a merger of two companies: Royal Dutch Petroleum and The Shell Transport & Trading Co.. The latter company which dealt with trading goods from East Asia actually did transport shells, among other goods.
2397: Naming of the First World War Jul 12, 2012
The First World War may have sounded a pessimistic name for those who would not predict a second, but in 1920 there was a book named as such. In fact, while many at the time called it The Great War, this had previously referred to the Napoleonic War, and realizing this nature of forgetting and renaming wars, The First World War, 1914-1918 by Charles à Court Repington was titled for people of future generations.
2395: Odd Soviet Names Jul 10, 2021
Russian names, especially during the Soviet era can reflect a lot about the culture. For instance, электростанция (elektrostantsiya) and индустриализация (industrializatsiya) meaning 'power-station' and 'industrialization' respectively were (and to a lesser extent still are) girls' names. Others existed like 'Vilen' as an acronym of (V)ladimir (I)lyich (Len)in. Much of the time this was to show one's dedication to the Communist Party, and many last names in this style were taken as well.
2394: Verrazzano & Verrazano Jul 9, 2021
Plenty of things around New York are named for Giovanni da Verrazzano. Many of these if not all however are mispelt. It is not entirely clear as to how things ended up this way, but major construction projects such as the Verrazano Bridge are only spelt with one Z. Likewise, the Maryland's Verrazano Bridge has this same error.
2392: New Angoulême Jul 7, 2021
Old New York was once New Amsterdam, but before then even it was known as New Angoulême. While officially taken by a French voyage, the man who commanded the ship was Italian. Still, he wished to curry favor with the French king and Giovanni da Verrazzano named it after the place the king was born. In fact, Francis I was from the house of Valois, but of those there were 3 dynasties: the House of Valois, Valois-Orléans, Valois-Angoulême, the latter of which King, Francis I was the first monarch.
2389: Eritrea & Eretria Jul 3, 2021
Eritrea is a country, and Eretria is a Greek city. These are not as connected as one might falsely conclude however, even though the country 'Eritrea' gets its name from Greek, specifically Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα (Erythra Thalassa) meaning 'Red Sea'. This name was given over by the Italians who colonized the land in 1890, but even when it was under the British or later Ethiopian control the name was retained. The nation has a number of different linguistic groups with no official language either from which to take another name. The Greek city is named Ερέτρια from the word ἐρέτης, (erétēs) meaning 'rower', giving the city the name translating as 'city of rowers'.
2374: nachos Jun 18, 2021
There's an old joke:
What do you call cheese that doesn't belong to you?
Nacho cheese. (This really only works if you say it out loud...)
For Ignacio Anaya however, this would be false. Nachos were actually named after a specific person, Ignacio Anaya, a Mexican restaurateur who owned Nacho's Restaurant and named the dish after himself too. Nacho happens to be a fairly common nicknamed form of the Spanish name Ignacio. This was originally the Latin 'Ignatius', famed for the saint Ignatius of Antioch, with Ignatius technically being a name in English but far less common than its Spanish equivalent.
2371: mortimer Jun 15, 2021
The surname and later first name 'Mortimer' (hence 'Morty') is originally French for 'dead sea'. This habitational surname however is subject to a folk etymology that this comes from the time when a French speaking class ruled over the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291) as one of the crusader states. The Dead Sea at the end of the Jordan River is certainly more famous, but not the dead sea in question, which is actually Mortemer, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, in France. This was the site of the Battle of Mortemer in 1054 fought in this area known for its stagnant water.
2366: Names with 'St.' not Named for Saints. Jun 10, 2021
There are places around the UK place names with 'St.' included in it which are not named after any saints. For instance, in Cornwall 'St Dennis' is not actually named after the martyr Denis of Paris but as a misinterpretation of the Cornish 'dinas' (hill-fort). The 'St.' was added later. Likewise, the Cornish village of St Agnes was not named for Agnes of Rome but in this case this is not from Cornish but from Old Norse, namely as a compound from 'hagi' (pasture) and 'nes' (headland). This is particularly notable because Cornwall is about as far from the Danelaw as one can get in England, but there are certain names influenced from Old Norse.
2362: Alcatraz: Named after which Bird? Jun 6, 2021
The island of Alcatraz is known for many things including as a prison, the site of a major Native American protest, and a museum, it was also known for its pelicans, sort of. Many people mistakenly believe this is where the name comes from, but the Spanish "La Isla de los Alcatraces" does not mean as many think "The Island of the Pelicans" but instead "The Island of the Gannets". Anyway, the Spanish for 'pelicans' is 'pelícanos' but there is an archaic Spanish word 'alcatraz' (pelican) from the Arabic: غطاس (al-ġaţţās) meaning 'the diver; the submerger'. It is from these gannets that the island took its name in 1775. More on this in a separate post.
2352: Virginia Named after Elizabeth May 27, 2021
The US state of Virginia (technically a commonwealth) is name for the British monarchy of its time, as with the colonial settlement of Jamestown within. The commonwealth however is named after Queen Elizabeth and isn’t ‘Elizabethia’. Rather this is because she was known as the Virgin Queen. Some have also suggested that this comes from native names like 'Wingandacoa' or the name 'Wingina' but the problem with this is that the name of the commonwealth originally applied to basically all of British America including as far north as Maine, as far south as parts of the Caribbean those these eventually came to have their own designations. Indeed, other queens have had monikers like Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: wife to George VI, though this is confusingly also used to refer to Queen Elizabeth II, her daughter.
2348: wright and macIntyre May 23, 2021
Many surnames derive from occupations, even though those terms are not really in use anymore, such as with 'Baxter'. This is so with the name 'Wright', from the Old English 'wryhta' meaning 'worker' specifically regarding wood. Hence this is where names like Shipwright and Cartwright come from as these are just compounds using that. The Norman French 'carpentier' eventually replaced this, but in some parts of Scotland the word is still used for tradesmen and they have a surname 'MacIntyre', literally 'son of a wright' from 'saoir' (carpenter).
2346: barcelona May 21, 2021
The name of the city 'Barcelona' originally was 'Baŕkeno', as has been attested on ancient coins and found in Ancient Greek and Latin. Where this name comes from however is slightly more contentious. One theory holds that this name comes from the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca who lived in Iberia when parts of it were under Carthaginian rule. That said, it's not clear that that area was itself a settlement of the Carthaginians. It is also not clear if its ancient name of Baŕkeno was really related to him, since there are also a number of other cities around the Mediterranean with similar names, like Barca in Libya related to 'Benghazi'.
2342: guy & gai May 17, 2021
There is a Hebrew name גיא (gai) but this is unrelated to the English name 'Guy'. For one thing, the Hebrew name is not Biblical as one might expect with English names originating in Hebrew, but also they mean totally different things, with גיא meaning 'raven'. 'Guy' is actually from the same root as 'Guido' or the Old German 'Wido' which means 'wood' though others trace this back further to a root meaning 'guide' related to the English 'wit' and 'witness' as it relates to seeing. It is also through this that the saint Saint Vitus is also known as Saint Guy. He was from Sicily, and while Guido is associated with Italians in America, the name and its variations are found throughout Europe.
2311: Mozart's Middle Name Apr 14, 2021
Mozart had many middle names, but Amadeus was never one of them. His full baptismal name is Latinized Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart though he went also by other versions of this in his typical German-speaking contexts, reverting 'Wolfgangus' to 'Wolfgang', and Theophilus, which is Greek, he used the translated Gottlieb (lover of G-d). It is from this final name where Amadeus emerges, since this is also the Latin translation but evidence shows that he would have only ever used the Italian 'Amadeo' and French 'Amadè' in those respective contexts; since he used the Greek alongside the other Latinized forms in his names, he would not have actually used Amadeus. It is only in his death records that he is listed as "Wolfgang Amadeus", which variably uses a German and then Latin form.
1215: Name-Variation (John and Elisabeth) Apr 7, 2018
It is not uncommon that older, popular names will have regional variations when given to children over a large area. For instance, the Germanic 'Johan' and 'John' also appears as the Romantic 'Jean', 'Juan', and 'Gianni', the Celtic 'Sean' and 'Iwan', and the Slavic 'Ivan' and even 'Honza', which all ultimately derive from the Hebrew 'Yohanan', relating to the name of G*d. While the phonetic differences among these do have some randomness, they can illuminate the similarities among certain phonemes. With the name 'Elisabeth', which in Scottish is 'Elspeth' or 'Elspet', the difference switching from [b] to [p], or at least 'b' to 'p', it shows how in certain environments—such as following an [s]—the two are more or less identical. Furthermore, [θ] (written as 'th') exists in relatively few languages including English, so it should not be surprising that a Scottish variation includes a [t] instead.
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