Recently Google decided to give Kansas City, KS free internet access. This is great for Kansas City, KS, but confusing for journalists without maps. Many of you already know that Kansas City, KS is a small neighborhood-like attachment to Kansas City, MO. Obviously the names are confusing and it would cost Google far too much money to wire up all of the larger KC. What other confusing names are out there?
Higher Eduction
Miami University is not in Florida, it’s in Oxford, OH. Oxford, OH borrowing its name from Oxford England. The name of the school comes from the Miami Valley which is carved by the Great Miami River. The river taking its name from the native American Miami people.
Washington University is not in Washington state or Washington DC, it’s in St. Louis. Not that Google is helping in this situation.
Yes, the University of Washington is located in Seattle, though Washington State University is much closer to Idaho than Seattle.
Pennsylvania probably wins the prize here being home to California University of Pennsylvania and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Both are name after the Pennsylvania towns in which they reside. I blame the people who named these towns.
Cities
Vancouver, British Columbia is not on Vancouver Island, Victoria and Nanaimo are though. It also shouldn’t be confused with Vancouver, WA which is on the other side of the Columbia River from Portland, OR. George Vancouver was a British Royal Navy captain who explored the Pacific Northwest and like explorers he has many things named after him.
So many towns in Oklahoma. The following are all located where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.
- Burbank
- Chattanooga
- Cleveland
- Fargo
- Miami
- Orlando
- Peoria
- Pittsburgh
- Santa Fe
- St. Louis
Food
Welsh rabbit has no rabbit in it and may not have originated in Wales. It’s a savory sauce made primarily of melted cheese and served over toast. The childhood me is perfectly happy with regular old cheese toast though. Bread, butter, two slices of American cheese, toaster oven, go.
The marketing of certain foods has also forced some odd name choices. The Chilean sea bass is most certainly not a bass, it’s a Patagonian toothfish. Not surprisingly it wasn’t selling well as toothfish so the name was changed and it was marketed as a sea bass. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch you should think twice about eating this fish though.
Similar to the toothfish, rapeseed oil just wasn’t selling for some reason. Again a name change was in order and we now know it as canola oil which gets its name from the abreviation for Canadian oil, low acid. Even the Canada part isn’t accurate these days since as of 2004, 91% of the canola oil in the US comes from North Dakota.
Mincemeat isn’t made of meat at all. It may have been a long time ago, but now it’s a combination of fruits, nuts and brandy often baked into pies. My grandfather loved the stuff and I haven’t found another person on the planet who likes it.
What common, places, items, musical acts or schools do you find infuriatingly misnamed?
