for cookware generally it's used to distinguish from stainless

I don't know, but that's what the pans are called.

They'd call it metallic carbon metal steel if they thought it would sell better. All steel has carbon, if it doesn't it's not steel.

It's like saying that pure salt has "no added sugars or preservatives" Of course it doesn't, it's salt, not a salt-sugar mixture, and you don't need to add a preservative, it is a preservative.

Ok, but they're still called that.

Why is “nation state” weird? AFAIK a nation and a state are two different things?

People use "nation-state" to mean "sovereign country", when it is in fact a specific kind of entity: a coterminous political and cultural/ethnic territory.

Colloquially, the word "nation" can mean something as simple as "country", but when you use the term "nation-state", you're going out of your way to invoke the technical definition.

On the other hand, "carbon steel pans" is just what they're called. Can't dunk on me for my metallurgical naivete; gotta take it up with Lodge.

I will, just as soon as I'm done with 'oven-baked'

It's a shortening of "high carbon steel" and has a technical definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_steel