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A comment on Things Unexpectedly Named After People. Parent comment

Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by tkgally on Thursday February 22, 2024 @03:42AM (#39464682)
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 not been documented [4].

[1] https://connecticutmills.org/find/details/e.h.-hotchkiss-co

[2] https://gally.net/temp/20240222hotchikisugogensetsu.jpg

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_B._Hotchkiss

[4] https://wis.max-ltd.co.jp/about/company/trivia/h_story/inven...

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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by throwaway2037 on Thursday February 22, 2024 @04:24AM (#39464940)
More: https://jisho.org/forum/5d132f2ed5dda71944000054-origin-of-n...
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by zilti on Thursday February 22, 2024 @05:43AM (#39465347)
In Switzerland, we call staplers Bostitch, which happens to be the name of an US company that (used to or still does) manufacture them.
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by glandium on Thursday February 22, 2024 @06:45AM (#39465763)
X rays are called Rentogen in Japanese, after Wilhelm Röntgen, who produced/detected them first.
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by smcl on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:08AM (#39465951)
Same in Czech, tbh it's possible that English is the outlier here
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by RMPR on Thursday February 22, 2024 @07:26AM (#39466107)
English is definitely not an outlier. In french it's Rayon X
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by smcl on Thursday February 22, 2024 @10:39AM (#39468677)
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

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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by ashildr on Thursday February 22, 2024 @08:13PM (#39475651)
X-Strahlen (X-Rays) is the name Röntgen invented for his discovery :)
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by artogahr on Thursday March 07, 2024 @06:46AM (#39627884)
People in Turkey definitely don't use X-ray, they use Röntgen. Same for Azerbaijan.
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by layer8 on Thursday February 22, 2024 @12:37PM (#39470382)
X rays are called Röntgen rays in German, which is where the Japanese got it from, like many medical terms.
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Re:Things Unexpectedly Named After People by thefringthing on Thursday February 22, 2024 @06:14PM (#39474664)
"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).
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