Non-Indicative Name/Real Life

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Non-Indicative Names in Real Life include:

Items

  • A police department's "narcotics division" is responsible for policing the use and distribution of all illegal drugs, even though the term "narcotic" specifically refers to a substance with relaxing or sleep-inducing properties (it has the same root word as "narcolepsy"). Several narcotics are legal drugs that can be bought in a pharmacy (like sleeping pills), but there are plenty of illegal drugs that are not narcotics (like cocaine and crystal meth).
  • "Gothic" art is actually not based on art of the East Germanic tribe. It was originally used to distinguish newer forms of art from "classical" art. It was meant to be derogatory in the same way as calling something "barbaric." Popular literature that involved dark, violent, and sexual themes was dubbed "gothic literature," and provided the basis for the "Goth" subculture.
  • Harvard University's Statue of Three Lies has an inscription that reads "John Harvard, Founder, 1638". First, it's not a statue of John Harvard (they picked a random student to model as by the time they got around to commissioning the statue, no one know what John Harvard looks like any more), who wasn't the founder of Harvard anyway (he donated his entire personal library, and they named the school after him). And Harvard wasn't founded in 1638.
    • So all in all, Statue of Three Lies seems to be a pretty indicative name...
      • However, John Harvard is a Non-Indicative Name for the founder of Harvard, and "founder of Harvard" and the statue are both inaccurate descriptions of John Harvard, so those are both non-indicative.
    • Likewise, Yale's statue of Nathan Hale is not a statue of Nathan Hale at all but rather a statue of a member of the Class of 1914 whose pose was decided to be the most handsome. This did not stop the CIA from wanting to acquire that statue, though Yale was so proud of the statue that they only let the CIA make a cast of it.
    • Trickily, the 1638 doesn't actually refer to the founding of the University, but to the years John Harvard died. On top of this, it wasn't named Harvard University until 1639, 3 years after it was founded and a year after John Harvard's death.
  • "The "black boxes" that record measurements in airplanes are actually orange. If you called them orange boxes people would mistake them for fruit containers.
    • That, or they'd mistake them for collections of Half Life spinoffs.
    • They might look black after being in burning wreckage for a while.
    • They're called Black Boxes because they were initially black ... until it was realised that it's hard to find a small black object in a smouldering heap of debris or under water.
  • Boxing rings are square.
    • Pro-Wrestling lampshades this by referring to their ring as "The Squared Circle"
    • Boxing gloves don't have individual fingers, so they're more like boxing mittens, aren't they? Don't say that to a boxer's face, though.
  • The letter W (doubleyou) is actually a double V. Usually.[1] In Classical Latin, U and V were the same letter, sometimes pronounced like a U and sometimes like a W (but never like a V, or a voiced F), and some languages (e.g., French, Danish, Swedish, Spanish) refer to the letter W as Double V. The reason English is different is that for some time v and u were pronounced differently depending on where in the word they were. If the word began with 'v' it was pronounced as we pronounce 'v'; if the word had a 'v' or a 'u' in it elsewhere it would always be 'u'. 'Have' would be written as 'haue', but 'value' would be 'value'.
  • The gas pedal in your car controls the flow of air, not gasoline. If you drive a diesel, it controls fuel pressure, but then the fuel's not gasoline. And for that matter, this so-called "gas" is a liquid. In modern electric cars, it controls the flow of electrons. Except in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and Canada where it's called an accelerator, which is perhaps more accurate.
    • Although, if the gas pedal did indeed control the flow of fuel, it might be correct too, as what burns is a gas; liquid gasoline will not burn. It has to evaporate and mix with oxygen to burn.
    • The technical name for that pedal has always been the accelerator (or throttle) - even in the U.S. "Gas Pedal" is simply a long standing slang term for it. Even still, since the amount of fuel that reaches the engine is directly proportional to the amount of air - it's not really that far off.
    • And in any case, only North Americans really call it "gas", the rest of the English-speaking world calls it "petrol".
    • If the "Gas pedal" controls the flow of air, and air is a gaseous state of matter, then hasn't it gone all the way around back to being an accurate name?
  • Pencil lead is actually graphite. The first "writing rods" were made from lead by Romans, but when graphite pencils were invented later, the name stuck.
  • Despite being commonly known as a tidal wave, a tsunami has nothing to do with tides. It took the news focusing on an actual tsunami (that killed over 100,000 people in 2004) for "tsunami" to supplant "tidal wave" in everyday vocabulary.
    • But this leads to the referring to actual tidal waves as "tsunamis", which is also wrong.
  • The game known in the U.S. as "football" deals with an object that can only loosely be considered a ball. And typically, only one or two players per team ever kick the ball.
    • The same happens in parts of Australia where "football" generally refers to one of the rugby codes. Australian Rules Football might pass the ball by hand a lot but you do need to kick the ball to score.
    • The Other Wiki says that the name "football" might have originally come from the sports by that name being played on foot (as opposed to polo, played on horseback), and that that you manipulate the ball by kicking it in some of them is a coincidence.
  • The Panama hat is made in Ecuador.
  • The US five-cent piece, the nickel, is composed of three-quarters copper and only one-quarter nickel. In Canada it's even worse—it's 94.5% steel, 3.5% copper, with just a 2% nickel plating.
    • Also, the base metals which make up a US penny are worth more then one cent thanks to inflation and rising metal costs.
      • This has happened before, leading to formal restrictions: it's illegal to hoard US coins with the intent to melt them down into their component metals.
    • The name "nickel" is not particularly indicative of value; indeed, the original nickel was worth three cents, not five. "Dime" is slightly better, but only if you know its old French origins.
  • Space operas contain no singing at all. Neither do soap operas, and they aren't particularly clean, either (quite the opposite).
    • There was a time when this applied to everything on television, as most people still associated the medium with the old silent movies that were played to a musical score (the musical theme making it technically an opera). Soap operas were targeted at housewives, and so usually advertised for home cleaning products like soap.
      • And the fact that Procter & Gamble actually outright owned and produced a few of the shows such as As the World Turns until it ended.
  • Anybody studying (American) Civil War firearms would be surprised to learn that "minnie" balls: A: Were pretty darn big (usually .50 to .60 caliber) and B: Were conical-shaped (pointed cones). The first part of the name is a corruption of the name of its French inventor, Claude Minie (min-nay). The second, well it just rolled off the tongue--mini-cones doesn't have the same ring...
    • Relatedly, in English-speaking military parlance, plain solid ammo without hollow points, tracers, or incendiary loads is still called "ball", despite universally being either a cylinder with one rounded end (pistol ammo) or pointed (rifle ammo). Same goes with the French name for "bullet", balle.[2]
    • In the same way, Mini-guns are actually pretty big. They got that name for being rifle caliber (7.62mm), rotary guns as opposed to the standard Aircraft 20mm (Vulcan) cannon (cannon shells can explode, gun bullets don't... usualy).
    • A single action revolver requires two actions to fire.
      • The "single action" refers to the trigger, where it only releases the hammer. In a dual action revolver or pistol, the trigger can both cock the hammer and release it.
    • Rimless ammunition has a rim.
    • Smokeless powder produces smoke when it burns
      • Compared to black powder, there's almost no smoke and shooting it repeatedly (as in, a company of soldiers, per side) doesn't blanket the battlefield in a haze.
  • Roller Coasters often have nonindicative names:
    • They are also sometimes called "Russian Mountains". Needless to say, in Russia itself, they are referred to as "American Mountains".
    • In Poland they are called "Mountain Rail" despite having nothing to do with the mountain, railway or cable cars that are sometimes called by that name.
  • Tanks get their name because, in World War I, the British factory workers assembling the first ones ever used thought (due to their rounded shapes) that they were working on water tanks.
    • The fact that other tanks generally carry a lot of stuff while military tanks carry a large amount of weapons and metal gives it some relation...
    • Some apparently had the word "Water Tank" written on their sides to let the enemy scouts believe that they were just armoured support-vehicles.
    • Another version has it that when someone who had accidentally been allowed to view them (at a distance) asked what they were, the reply was "water tanks for Mesopotamia".
  • A ten-gallon hat will hold less than one gallon of liquid.
    • Three quarts, to be precise. The word "gallon" comes from (what else?) the Spanish galon, a type of braid.
  • Somewhat common with military hardware, e.g. a Claymore mine is not a sword. Sometimes this is done intentionally: the term "tank" was coined by the British to mislead their enemies into thinking they were building water carriers, not armoured fighting vehicles.
    • It can generally assumed many names for them were based off the Rule of Cool - the XM8's name only indicates it's an American rifle (The 'M#' is a designation for many American service rifles), the X was probably just to sound futuristic-y.
      • "XM" is a designation given to experimental weapons that haven't been officially adopted yet. For example, a predecessor of the M4 carbine was the XM177, which essentially became the CAR-15.
      • The X designation in general is used for any experimental project whether it's a gun or a fighter jet.
  • The green room in show business is almost never actually green.
  • "Oxygen" is derived from a term meaning "acid-creating". This is completely backwards much of the time.
  • Platinum comes from the Latin word platina, meaning silver. They're two different elements. According to an essay by Isaac Asimov, this is because "platina" was Middle Spanish for "silver"; so when the Conquistadores found platinum in the Rio Pinto, they called it "platina del Pinto". Hence, in Modern Spanish, "platina" is platinum and "plata" is silver.
  • The "Bush differential analyzer" performs integration, and does so entirely by synthesis.
  • The Hughes H-4 Hercules, aka the "Spruce Goose". It got its nickname because it was made entirely of wood, but it's actually built almost entirely of birch wood, not spruce.
  • Floppy sizes are actually measured in metric - 3 1/2 inch, 5 1/4 inch, and 8 inch floppies are built to 90, 133 1/3 (yes, a third of a millimeter), and 200 mm specifications, respectively. Using the imperial measurements would put you within a few millimeters, but on equipment so precise, outside tolerance for all but the 5 1/4 inch.
    • Also, the size of the familiar 1.44 MB floppy is actually either 1.40625 binary megabytes or 1.47456 decimal megabytes. The confusion stems from it being 1440 binary kilobytes.
    • While 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppy disks are indeed floppy, 3 1/2 inch floppy disks have a more solid construction. They were occasionally called "stiffy" disks, but the name didn't catch on in most places.
    • The whole binary thing gives "kilobyte" and "megabyte," at least in older contexts, Non-Indicative Name status, since they contain, respectively, 2^10 and 2^20 bytes.
    • And, to further confuse things, most modern hard drive sizes are now listed in decimal gigabytes and terabytes, which makes the size 7% and 10% bigger respectively than the binary sizes.
  • Most "MOSFETs," or "metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors," made in the last few decades have neither metal as their terminal, nor oxide as their insulator. The name comes from the early days, when the best way to get an insulating layer small enough was to oxidize a thin layer of the substrate, but more precise techniques have made this obsolete. Even the "metal," due to the complexities of IC manufacture, is usually a metalloid treated to act like a metal. Some call them "IGFETs," "insulated-gate field effect transistors," for this reason, but this hasn't really caught on. Usually they're simply called FETs.
  • In baseball, a "foul pole" is a pole on either side of the outfield fence which separates a foul ball from a fair ball, even though a ball that hits the pole is fair.
  • The Yellow Cab Company in Washington, DC has its cars painted in a distinctive black and orange two-tone livery.
  • Pharmacology lives off of this trope. Rifampin, amantadine, cifedipine, digitalis - can you tell what any of those drugs do just by their name alone?
  • Cans are often called 'tins' because they used' to be made of tin, now it's usually non-indicative (and, if the tin is labeled as such, an aversion of Exactly What It Says on the Tin.)
  • "Hoverboards" are actually two-wheeled self-balancing scooters that never leave the ground. Attempts to create actual hovering hoverboards, particularly in time for the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, have failed miserably.
  • Those so-called "MP4 players" common during the mid-to-late 2000s do not actually play MPEG-4 videos, instead using a proprietary codec depending on the chipset used, usually AMV or MTV. (Not to be confused with Anime Music Video or MTV, though you could encode either or both of them in either format and load them on an MP4 player anyway) Some manufacturers take a step further and sell media players with additional functionality (such as emulated NES games and such) as an "MP5" or even an "MP12" player, despite the Moving Picture Experts Group having not developed an MPEG-5 standard yet. In a sense, the designation refers to any new function added to a portable media player or an evolution over previous-generation MP3 players rather than the container format used to store videos.
  • Despite being marketed by Microsoft as an "operating system", early versions of Windows up to 3.1x are more of an operating environment or a shell running on top of DOS, though it did assume many operating system functions and used its own device drivers. Windows 9x still depended on MS-DOS, though this is relegated for backwards-compatibility with 16-bit drivers and DOS games. It wasn't until NT when DOS is truly dead, despite Microsoft boldly proclaiming in a DirectX game demo disc for Windows 95 that "DOS IS DEAD".
  • Catgut downplays this Trope. It has never been made from cats, but rather sheep or goats, and occasionally cows, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys. In this case, "cat" is a contraction of "cattle".
  • The Guaranteed Pure Milk bottle in Montreal never held milk, pure or otherwise.

Living Things

  • Guinea pig (read the trope description).
    • The guinea pig bears a porcine name in many European languages (and Chinese) - the German name (from which several other languages derived their name) is Meerschweinchen ("sea piglet"), the French sometimes calls it Cochon d'Inde ("Indian pig"), a Chinese name is hélánzhū ("Holland pigs")... apparently, guinea pigs came from everywhere but South America.
  • Blueberries and cranberries are not "true" berries, but "epigynous" or "false" berries, as are bananas and watermelons. Strawberry, blackberry, boysenberry, mulberry and raspberry are not (botanically) even "false" berries. True berries include, as well as gooseberries and elderberries, tomatoes, grapes, eggplant, and pomegranates. This one came up in QI, and people will probably agree with Alan Davies that it's the scientists who are wrong, and the rest of them are right.
  • Antlion, mantisfly, dragonfly and mantis shrimp: There's no ant, lion, mantis, fly, dragon or shrimp in any of these.
    • There most certainly is ant in an antlion...if it has recently fed.
    • There is also certainly lion in antlion if it has recently been fed. Of course, we're talking big antlions.
    • Rule of thumb for insects with common names of the form " fly": If the name is written as two words, like "house fly", it's a fly (i.e. a member of the order Diptera). If it's written as one word, like "butterfly", it's not a fly.
  • Hippopotamus means "river horse" but it's more closely related to swine and the other Artiodactyla. The term coming from ancient Greek makes this Older Than Feudalism.
    • Quoth P.J. O'Rourke: "Hippopotamus does not mean river horse but rather 'river first husband'."
      • Few if any of them are married.
  • These are -fish which are all invertebrate and thus not possibly fish.
    • Crayfish: A crustacean.
    • Starfish: An echinoderm.
    • Silverfish: A non-silvery creepy looking multilegged bug.
    • Cuttlefish: A cephalopod.
      • The name comes from their "cuttle" bone. That said, you can find plushies of cuttlefish.
    • Jellyfish: A member of the phylum Cnidaria. Not made of jelly either. It is squishy like jelly though... but don't touch it.
    • Shellfish: generic term for mollusks with a shell.
      • More recent terminology has most of these things renamed from "(X)fish" to "Sea (X)", so Starfish becomes Seastar, Jellyfish becomes Sea Jelly, etc. However, the "(X)fish" comes from the fact that the word 'fish' comes from a noun meaning "an animal that lives in water" and all these names were actually quite indicative because they do live in water. Except for silverfish, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
      • Funnily enough, sea horses and sea dragons are fish.
  • Velvet worms aren't worms, and also aren't made of velvet (they are covered in a velvety coat of hair, though).
    • Ringworm is not only not a worm but not an animal. It's actually a fungus. Skin infections caused by it, however, do have a vaguely ring-shaped area of swollen skin on the edge of the infected skin.
  • Another notorious misnomer from Columbus is naming the capsicum (chili, bellpepper) genus "pepper", having nothing to do with the piper family (black and white pepper).
    • The Spanish word for many species belonging to the Capsicum genus (among many others from "chile" to "ají" or "guindilla" for the different species of plants and varieties of the language) is "pimiento", and "pimienta" for the ones in the Piper genus. It's a pity words have no grammatical gender in English.
    • Supposedly it's the result of another attempted mistake cover-up by Columbus, since nearly the whole point of his expedition was to bring back piper peppers.
  • Sweet potatoes are only distantly related to the common potato, and have even less genetic relation to yams, despite the terms being synonymous in the US.
  • The titmouse is a bird.
    • Tits are birds, not mammals, thus don't have tits.
      • Same with boobies.
      • They're still not mice.
  • The Congo snake is an American legless salamander.
    • The slow worm is a European legless lizard. It's not particularly slow, either.
  • Horseshoe crab: It's not quite a crab but more closely related to arachnids, and only horseshoe-shaped if you stretch the definition a good bit.
  • Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor a moss.
  • Puffinus puffinus is the scientific name for the Manx shearwater bird.
  • White tigers have black and white fur.
  • Cyanobacteria used to be called "blue-green algae," but because they lack a nucleus they are now considered not to be algae.
  • Slime molds are not a kind of mold. They're no longer even classified as fungus at all, but protists.
  • In the human body, the small intestine is much longer than the large intestine. The names come from their width, not their length.
  • Sea Cucumbers are animals, not squash.
  • Peanuts are in fact legumes, not nuts. Also, from The Other Wiki: "The word pea describes the edible seeds of many other legumes in the Fabaceae family, and in that sense, a peanut is a kind of pea."
    • This explains why for allergics, on some packs with peanuts there's still printed on "May contain nuts." In fact, they're required to list peanuts and nuts separately, but things with peanuts often get that label, because they packaged in a factory that also does nuts.
    • Cats Don't Dance has Woolie talk about how the peanut is neither pea nor nut, and briefly suggests the name "pea legume" before dropping the matter.
    • A coconut is not a nut either, but if somebody has a allergy to nuts and nut oils, they will also be allergic to peanuts and coconuts. Even though we've just explained why this shouldn't work.
  • Pineapples are not the fruit of pines. Those are called pine cones, which used to be called pine apples and lent their name to the tropical fruit due to the superficial similarity. Neither pineapples nor pine apples aren't apples, either; "apple" used to refer to any type of fruit (ref. the equally non-indicative French name for potatoes, pomme de terre/dirt apple[3]).
    • Pomegranates are also not apples, and neither are they grenades.
    • They are superficially similar enough to both that the name is understandable.
  • The Polar Bear is not (as you might think) Ursus arctos (that's the Brown Bear, or grizzly), but Ursus maritimus. Also, the Arctic as a region is named for the bears (the Ursa constellations), not the other way around.
    • "Ursus arctos" is effectively "bear bear", the first in Latin and the second in Greek. The Antarctic, on the other hand, is aptly named, since it comes from the Greek for "no bears".
      • The Greeks were well aware that the Earth was round, and reasoned that since the climate was cold at the north end, it should also be cold at the south end since the same factors prevailed.
  • From QI:

Rich Hall: I think it's evil to put a food in front of any bug. To name it, like, a "butterfly". 'Cause I would eat butterflies when I was a kid, because I thought they had butter in 'em. And honey bees. And a hamster! 'Cause, you know, you're four years old; you don't know better... and we were poor.

  • The Australian Shepherd dog breed is actually American. The Bombay cat breeds are a similar case, with one being American (again) and the other being British.
  • The Norway rat originated somewhere in China. Its Non-Indicative Name was bestowed by someone who mistook Danish ships, on which he thought these rodents had stowed away and spread throughout Europe, for Norwegian ones.
  • Grapefruit. It's orange, sour, and the size of a cannonball. At least on the tree, they grow in bunches that resemble bunches of grapes.
  • Canada geese aren't Canadian (although they can be found there). Blame a Mr. John Canada.
    • Canada lynx, on the other hand, are (even though they turn up in the United States, too). Go figure.
  • The White Rhinoceros is actually gray. The White in this species' name is from the Dutch word wijd, which means wide. It refers to the White Rhinoceros's wide lip compared to the Black Rhinoceros's pointed lip. The original meaning was subsequently lost in translation.
  • Most anteaters eat nothing but termites.
    • In Finnish, the word for anteater is "muurahaiskarhu", which means "ant bear". The creature is obviously neither an ant nor a bear.
  • The hagfish, aka the "slime eel", is a jawless chordate, meaning it's less closely related to genuine eels than you are.
  • The Cane Toad is occasionally referred to as the Marine Toad and has the scientific name Bufo marinus, but when this species reaches adulthood it only goes into the water during the mating season.
  • The Danish language loves to give most marsupials names of completely non-related mammals that they may something be similar to and sometimes not are, coupled with "marsupial". Examples are "marsupial rat" (opossum), "marsupial mouse" (several small dasyurids like dibblers and kowaris), "marsupial marten" (quoll), "marsupial anteater" (numbat), "marsupial badger" (bilby/bandicoot), "marsupial fox" (brushtail possum), "marsupial squirrel" (most species of possums) and "marsupial flying squirrel" (sugar glider).
  • There are several English 'forests' where there are few, if any, trees to be seen. Large tracts of Dartmoor Forest in Devon, Macclesfield Forest in Cheshire and the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire are bare open moorland with trees confined to the occasional river valley. In English law a forest was simply an area to which Forest Law applied, in other words a royal hunting ground.

Food and Drink

  • Most of what's sold in American grocery stores as cinnamon sticks are actually the bark of the Cassia tree. They're closely related and taste similar, but not identical.
  • Most of the mozzarella cheese on the market is actually imitation mozzarella, as true mozzarella must be made from water-buffalo milk. Cow milk is much cheaper.
  • Most of what is packaged as "wasabi" in American and European shops is usually not true wasabi due to cultivation difficulties. It's actually mostly horse radish. Wasabi is often called "Japanese horse radish" even though it's not a species of horse radish.
  • In Germany and Austria, there is a food called Leberkäse, which literally means "liver-cheese". It normally has neither liver nor cheese in it, unless you order a special type of it that way ("Leberkäse mit Käse" or "liver-cheese with cheese"), and is commonly translated into English as "meatloaf".
  • Chinese fortune cookies were invented in the United States and are of Japanese descent.
  • Scotch eggs, Scotch pies, and Scotch broth are not made with real Scotch (although one supposes Scotch could theoretically be added to the broth, only a Lethal Chef with no respect for fine spirits would do that). (One is a hard-boiled egg encased in sausagemeat and breadcrumbs, the second is a mutton pie made with a particular kind of pastry, and the third is lamb/mutton broth with vegetables.) These three (along with the whisky) are among the few cases in which the correct adjective is "Scotch" rather than "Scottish".
    • Scotch eggs, contrary to the name, are not Scottish but an English snack, most probably inspired by an Indian dish.
    • Butterscotch has nothing to do with Scotland (it most likely got its name from the fact that before it fully cools, the candy is "scotched" or scored to make it easier to break up). The misnomer is even worse in Canadian French, where it's known as caramel écossais or Scottish caramel.
  • Mince Pies (the English kind) are pastries made with a filling of mincemeat. Originally the mincemeat was made up of meat, various fruits and preserves. Nowadays though, most mince pies don't contain any meat (unless you make your own at home) but the filling is still referred to as mincemeat.
  • AriZona Iced Tea is based in New York.
  • Chinese Hoisin (meaning 'Seafood') Sauce doesn't actually contain any seafood. Also, judging from The Other Wiki's description, it doesn't seem to be used on seafood, either.
  • Salad cream isn't intended specifically for salads (it's essentially a non-thixotropic version of mayonnaise, hence intended for the same broad range of uses) and (unlike mayonnaise) isn't particularly creamy.
  • Red Rock Cider was once the subject of an advertising campaign pointing out that 'It's not red, and there's no rocks in it'.
  • The "cacahuate japonés" (literally Japanese peanut) snack was not invented in Japan, but in Mexico. The creator was a Japanese immigrant, though.
  • The sauces of Classic French cuisine is full of these things: Sauce Allemande ("German sauce") isn't German. Sauce Espagnole ("Spanish sauce") isn't Spanish.[4] Sauce Africaine ("African sauce") isn't African.[5] "Créme anglaise" isn't English, or a cream![6]
  • Russian dressing, Italian dressing, and French dressing were all invented in the US.
  • Head cheese does not contain any dairy. It does, however, contain meat and gelatin from a pig's head.
  • Grape Nuts have nothing to do with grapes. Or nuts. They contain dextrose, sometimes called "grape sugar," although dextrose is more commonly known as glucose, which means "grain sugar".
  • For the longest time Apple Jacks had no apple taste at all. In fact, there was an awkward period of advertising where commercials had people surprised that Apple Jacks didn't taste like apples, when the cereal at the time actually did taste like apples, and even contained apple ingredients.
  • French Fries actually came from Belgium, or perhaps Spain. There's some debate as to which. To those thinking it's about the style of cutting, the original verb meaning to cut in that style of cutting is to julienne (and yes, it is from France); the use of "Frenching" to refer to this comes after and because of French fries.
    • Also, they were discovered by American soldiers serving in France during World War I and brought back to the States.
    • The Other Wiki claims the phrase comes from the style of frying. That is, "french fries" are potatoes cooked in a French manner. Apparently they were known at least as early as the Revolutionary Era.
  • An egg cream contains neither eggs nor cream. It does, however, resemble a creamed egg (creamed meaning "frothy.") Some researchers believe that early versions of the drink did indeed have both egg and cream as ingredients, as a cheaper variation on the then-recently-invented milkshake. According to this theory, the "New York Egg Cream" then removed egg and cream because they're expensive ingredients.
  • What Americans call an "English Muffin" is a subspecies of muffin that wasn't even available in the UK until a few years ago (when it started arriving there, along with other exports like graduation balls at the end of compulsory schooling and St Patrick's Day parades). Similarly, Britain has or had a lot of "American-Style X" brand names that had little to do with any real American style. And then there's the fact that Danish pastries are known in Denmark as 'Viennese bread'... In a twist, neither name for Danish pastries are entirely non-indicative: Danish pastries are something of a speciality of Denmark, might have originated from Vienna, and is classified as a Viennoiserie[7] product.
  • Ginger Ale tastes neither like ginger nor ale, but more akin to lemon-lime.
    • This is a regional thing - Canadian ginger ale definitely tastes of ginger, and Jamaican ginger beer even more so.
  • Ginger beer, root beer and butterbeer are all nonalcoholic.
    • Except when they aren't.
  • And there's the Neapolitan onion sauce known as Genovese.
  • German chocolate cake is not from Germany, but American. It was originally made by Sam German.
    • For an actual German chocolate cake, by which we mean the cake is actually from Germany and also happens to be a chocolate cake, you'll want a Black Forest cake instead. (Yes, like the one in Portal.)
      • Black Forest cake is not made of black trees. It was invented in the Black Forest, though.
      • And that forest has the usual green and brown colour tones.
      • Worse, it's called Selva Negra (Black Jungle) in Spanish.
      • To make it even worser, the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) is actually a mountain range, like "Bayrischer Wald", "Böhmer Wald" oder "Teutoburger Wald". But "Schwarzgebirge" or "Schwarzes Gebirge" sounds too much Mordor.
  • Mincemeat doesn't contain meat (although it used to). Not to be confused with minced meat.
  • Sweetbreads are meats - specifically, the thymus glands of cows, pigs or sheep. Sweetmeat is a synonym for candy.
  • Long Island Iced Tea is, um, not what you want to be drinking if you just fancy a cold cuppa. It is iced, though, and presumably from Long Island, so it's at least three-quarters accurate.
  • Yakisoba's name seems to imply a connection to soba, but it is actually quite different; soba is a native Japanese type of noodle while yakisoba has more in common with Chinese noodles, as ramen does. There's a debate on whether or not Okinawa Soba should be considered soba, as they are not buckwheat, as required to be considered soba.
  • Toll House Cookies don't have anything specific to do with English buildings used for toll collection, they are named for the now-destroyed Toll House Inn, the restaurant (converted from a toll house actually used to collect tolls) where they were invented.
  • A lot of Chinese cuisine, especially Straits Chinese cuisine, have non-indicative names for various reasons. Some because the dish has a poetic name, usually for delicacies like "Buddha Jumps Over the Wall" (a type of shark's fin soup). Some due to poor translation such as Bak Kut Teh ("Meat Bone Tea") not actually being a form of tea or "Carrot Cake" which is not actually made from carrots but from radishes ("white carrot" in most Chinese dialects) nor is it a "cake" as most people would recognize it. Some cases are historical, the "Hainanese chicken rice" you find in South-East Asia does not actually come from Hainan, China but rather was pioneered by Hainanese immigrants (although this one is in some dispute).
  • The Caesar salad is not named after Julius Caesar, nor was it first created in Italy. It was created in Mexico by Italian-American immigrant Caesar Cardini.
  • Japan's list of "Three grand soups" is made up of bouillabaisse, shark fin soup, borscht, and tom yam kung - four soups.
  • British plum pudding has no plums in it, although the name used to indeed fit, as raisins (which the pudding does have) used to be called "plums" up until the end of the 19th Century.
  • Whatever "Canadian bacon" is, it's unknown in Canada.

People

  • Farid al-Atrash was a composer, virtuoso oud player, and top-notch singer, and was one of the biggest names in Arab music in general and Egyptian music in particular for much of the 20th century. His sister Amal (better known as Asmahan) was also a noted singer and actress. Their last name means "the Deaf."
  • Pennsylvania Dutch have German descent, not Dutch. The German word for German is "Deutsch," which sounds like Dutch.
  • "Petite models" are between 5'6" and 5'8" -- not only quite a bit taller than the usual definition of "petite," but above average in most countries (the average American woman is between 5'4" and 5'5".)
  • Alexander ("I defend" "man") the Great is known for being quite aggressive towards mankind, rather than defending it.
  • Stand-up comedian Larry the Cable Guy won't fix your cable box...and his real first name isn't Larry. In fact "Larry the Cable Guy" is more or less a character played by comedian Dan Whitney that has completely taken over his stand-up act.
  • Charles Coward; not a coward at the least, he was a British POW during World War II who actually managed to pose as a German medic, get himself appointed of Auschwitz itself, and liberate hundreds of prisoners by switching them for cadavers. He was later an important witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. You'd have to be pretty brave to accomplish all that.
  • Legendary film director Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof) was raised, and still is, Protestant.
  • Suggested to be the case of H.P. Lovecraft, who was never known to craft anything romantic and a rumored Asexual.
  • Joe the Plumber, made famous by John McCain's 2008 run for president in the United States, was not a licensed plumber (he operated under his employer's license, as is legal in his state). Also, his first name was Samuel.
  • People whose first name is also the title of an occupation which they don't hold: Major, Judge, etc. Applies to other languages as well, such as Amir/Amira which is Arabic for prince/princess.
    • People with clerical names like Bishop, Monk, etc might be held to descend from perjured clerics(as only One Person is held by the Church to be born of a virgin) and thus would be rather curiously eager to advertise that fact in their name. In real life a lot of those were Medieval actors who were known for playing as clerics. In other words someone who has a clerical name not only has a name that does not indicate their profession(unless of course it does), it does not even indicate their ancestor's profession at first glance.
  • Place names are usually not their ancestors residence when they lived there. It is usually given because they moved. After all what would be the point if everyone comes from that place.
    • This Troper knows a Rhodes who has a dark and menacing look that makes one wonder if his ancestor was not indeed out marauding with the Knights Hospitalers(who were once based on Rhodes)at one time or another, before he settled down somewhere else.
  • Despite the name, your average Conspiracy Theorist will almost never describe an overall theory of the conspiracy. This is because their preferred approach allows them to jump from one issue to another when they get cornered, and a complete theory can be debunked once and for all, in addition to just plain looking ridiculous and improbable.[8] This is what happens when one decided to come up with a such a theory [dead link].
  • You will never meet a person with skin tones matching either the background or the font used on this page. Except the Blue Man Group.
    • It's a safe bet that most people who are referred to as "Caucasians" don't actually hail from the Caucasus mountain range in Eastern Europe.
  • In an unbelievable case of being both a Meaningful Name and a Non-Indicative Name, Viking chieftain Erik the Red earned his nickname not because of his bloodlust (he was kicked out of both Norway and later Iceland for multiple murders), but because of his long flaming red hair and beard.
  • Joan of Arc (AKA Jeanne d'Arc) wasn't named "Joan" and didn't come from Arc. Her name was Jehanne. She was born and raised in Domrémy, France. Her father's surname was "Darc" or "Tarc" or any of a half-dozen alternate spellings, none of which had an apostrophe -- and she'd never used it, instead (as she testified at her trial) using her mother's surname as was the custom in her part of France. Twenty-five years after her death the British misread the records and essentially created from wholecloth the name she has been known by for six centuries.

Places

  • The Danville, California family restaurant Pete's Brass Rail & Car Wash. As the menu says, "There is no brass rail, there is no car wash, and who the hell is Pete?"
  • A pizza place in Columbus, Ohio is called Catfish Biff's. Their slogan: "We ain't got no fish!"
  • The NASCAR track once known as the Charlotte Motor Speedway (now the Lowe's Motor Speedway) is located in the city of Concord, North Carolina, which is not even in the same county as Charlotte.
    • It's just across the county line from the county that has Charlotte. Not only that, but the Charlotte city limits are only a few miles away. No one had no clue where Concord, North Carolina is anyway, and since Charlotte is the better-known city, well...
    • Similarly, the Milwaukee Mile is neither located in the city of Milwaukee (although West Allis, where the track is actually located, is still in Milwaukee County) nor is it a true mile.
  • Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, which many people take as meaning they held the surrender meeting in a courthouse. In fact, that was just the name of the town (really not much more than a hamlet, which didn't actually have a courthouse), and the ceremony was held in a civilian dwelling.
    • Also from the Civil War, the Battle of Chancellorsville was actually fought in a forest. Notable because another battle was later fought on the same ground and is known as the Battle of the Wilderness.
  • The North Poles (Magnetic and Geographic) are situated in the Arctic Ocean, international waters. This hasn't stopped cities being named North Pole in Alaska, New York, and Western Australia.
  • The Holy Roman Empire pretty much owns this subcategory. It was an agglomeration of semi-independent duchies, principalities, marches, counties, baronies and city-states, plus a kingdom or two, in Germany and Central Europe with Rome under its protection. To borrow a quote from Voltaire, it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
    • Similarly, someone observed that the British dignitary known as the Lord Privy Seal is neither a lord, nor a privy, nor a seal. Funny, although not strictly accurate given that the office can and often has been held by peers of the realm (i.e. lords). The name originates with the guy who kept the monarch's private (privy) seal for documents and is now usually held by a Cabinet minister. (In fact, the joke is so old that it's now a euphemism for the B-Roll Rebus in parts of England.)
    • The other Roman empire, for that matter, lasted over 650 years after losing Rome for the last time (when it turned to the Franks, giving the HRE its name), having controlled it on and off from 536-800.
  • 7-Elevens are likely to be open 24/7.
    • This is an Artifact Title, since 7 AM to 11 PM used to be the store's regular hours before they expanded to being always open.
  • Battersea Funfair was an amusement park, not a funfair. In March 2010, there have appeared in London (UK) adverts for a so-called "travelling theme park", which is a contradiction in terms; the amusement industry definitions are that if it travels it's a fair, whilst if it stays in one place it's a park. (A fairground stays in one place, but the collections of rides it hosts are temporary, hence still fairs.)
  • A demilitarized zone is supposed to not allow military activity. The Korean Demilitarized Zone (between North and South Korea), as the Wikipedia article goes, is "the most heavily militarized border in the world". You know that mined field from Die Another Day? It really exists.
  • The University of Texas at Dallas is not actually in Dallas (save for a couple of buildings), but is instead mostly located in a suburb of Dallas, Richardson.
    • The State University of New York at Buffalo, isn't actually in Buffalo, most of it's in either Amherst or Tonawanda.
  • The Glaswegian restaurant The Ubiquitous Chip is so called because, for the first thirty years of its existence, it - almost uniquely among Scottish restaurants - didn't sell chips.
  • Wake Forest University is actually not located in the town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, it is in Winston-Salem, which is over 100 miles away from there. It was located in Wake Forest for its first 122 years but moved in 1956. The university actually predates the town by 46 years and the city was even original named the Town of Wake Forest College
  • University of Phoenix Stadium is not where the University of Phoenix plays sports. As a matter of fact, it is a for-profit college with no intercollegiate athletics program; it just bought the naming rights to where the Cardinals play.
  • Italy's Naples and Russia's Novgorod are among the oldest cities in their respective countries. Both of their names mean "new city"
    • Similarly, the Pont Neuf ("brand-new bridge") in Paris is the oldest bridge of the city.
  • Japan:
    • Kyoto (literally "capital city") is not the capital. It used to be, though.
    • Café Mountain in Nagoya is somewhat notoriously not located anywhere near any.
    • Tokyo:
      • The (in)famous Red Light District of Kabukichō in Shinjuku Ward doesn't actually contain a kabuki theatre. It's an Artifact Title stemming from plans to build one there that never came to fruition.
      • "Tokyo" Disneyland is actually in Chiba Prefecture to the east. Granted that Chiba is in the Greater Tokyo Area and that the city Tokyo Disneyland is in is just across the prefectural border, but when people say "Tokyo" they usually refer to the 23 special wards, which Chiba isn't part of.
      • Arakawa Ward and Arakawa River never come into contact with each other.
    • Several train stations suffer from this:
      • Meguro Station in Tokyo is not in the namesake ward, but actually neighbouring Minato Ward.
      • Naka-Meguro Station in Tokyo, while indeed in Meguro Ward, is not in the namesake district, but rather Kamimeguro district.
      • Shinagawa Station in Tokyo is not in the namesake ward, but actually Minato Ward to the immediate north thereof. Even more confusingly, there is also a Kitashinagawa Station - kita being Japanese for "north" - that is indeed in the north of Shinagawa Ward, but to the south of Shinagawa Station.
  • Rhode Island is part of the mainland United States. See the Other Wiki for some theories on how it got this name.
  • University buildings may fall into this trope over time. For instance, the Old Horticulture Building at Michigan State University houses...the Department of Romance and Classical Studies (that's "Romance" as in "Romance languages"). Yes. Horticulture is housed in the Plant and Soil Science Building, which actually is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • Any institution with multiple functional parts that persists for a long time and tends to grow will do this. Governments often avoid this simply because they tend to name buildings after people, rather than the functions housed in them, although the US Capitol Building has an Old Supreme Court Chamber, and an Old Senate Chamber, and the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada has the Old City Hall building (all three of these being Exactly What It Says on the Tin).
  • The country of Greenland. If you look on a map the entire land mass is white.
  • The greater part of Kansas City is in Missouri.
  • Orange and Orange County in California in modern times. They used to grow oranges there.
  • The Pacific Ocean is a zig-zag. While it actually was peaceful for a long time, certainly more then the Meditterranean it also had one of the most famous wars ever take place largely upon it.
  • The Forbidden City; not truly a city, it's actually a complex of former imperial palaces - and now a museum - located within a city, Beijing. In fact, the Forbidden City is located within a larger complex called the Imperial City, which again, is not truly a city.
  • The Harvard Bridge is actually closer to MIT.
    • And that's hardly the most confusing thing about getting around the Boston area. There's no school on School St, no court on Court St, no water anywhere near Water Street, plus there are at least three Broadways, four Washington Streets, and more Harvard Streets, Avenues, and Roads than one could count. And you'll never find East Boston, South Boston, the North End or the South End using a compass. The fastest way to get lost in Boston is to look at the street signs.
    • Some of the north/south/east/west issues make a certain degree of sense if you see an old map (ie, ca. 1775) of Boston and realize the majority of what's now Boston is built on backfill and the original city (the Common, Back Bay, which used to actually be on the bay but don't use that to find it now, Beacon Hill, etc) was on a peninsula only attached to the mainland by a very narrow strip called Boston neck. Roads were randomly attached wherever new fill land was created, so streets begin and end with huge gaps between them, make sharp turns, are named for buildings that aren't there any more, and heaven help you if you want to try and figure out where anything is in Cambridge. And then they started tunneling under things, so you get around Boston by either wandering until you stumble on your destination or trusting public transit. Speaking of which, the outbound Green Line subway splits into roughly five lines. All still called the Green Line. If you get on the wrong one....
    • Harvard Square has three sides. The "Quad" at the University of Pennsylvania has five.
  • In Toronto, New College is far from the newest thing at University of Toronto. Then again, you could say the same thing about New College Oxford (founded 1379).
  • Northwestern University sits squarely in the Midwestern US, in Evanston, Illinois (immediately north of Chicago). It was admittedly part of the area known as the Northwest Territory when it was founded in the early 19th century, but now it just sounds silly, especially considering that it's in the far northeastern corner of Illinois, and Northeastern Illinois University isn't far from it at all.
  • American Indians have nothing to do with India. However, Indian-Americans do.
    • From The Other Wiki: "The term Indian is commonly thought to have begun with the misconception by Christopher Columbus that the Caribbean islands were the islands in Southeast Asia known to Europeans as the Indies, which he had hoped to reach by sailing west across the Atlantic. Even though Columbus's mistake was soon recognized, the name stuck, and for centuries the native people of the Americas were collectively called Indians."
      • To avoid confusion, they were called the West Indies.
      • One humorist wrote an essay with Columbus telling a Caribbean native that his ship had guns, and therefore if he said they were Indians.... The native replied, "Welcome to India, sahib!"
    • Likewise, "Native American" literally means anyone born in America (the supercontinent, not the country called the United States of America). All of the Native Americans born in the last few thousand years were born in the Americas, so they are Native Americans.
      • Lampshaded in The Simpsons when Lisa tries to dedicate a toast to a Native American and Homer accepts since he was native born. No no, Lisa is referring to an American Indian; Apu accepts since he immigrated. No no, Lisa means-
      • William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, claimed on The Colbert Report that he's more of a Native American than any Indian, because he was born in New York and "those people came over from Asia."
      • "First Nations" is the term used in Canada, and does have a much closer claim to clarity and accuracy on its side, but it doesn't really translate into an individual noun. "First Nationer?" Tribe names are good if you know them, but unfortunately most of those in the public consciousness are weird inaccurate European inventions as well ("Huron" is a bit of a jump from "Wendot"). Of course, actually asking people what their own names are is impossible.
        • Another term often used is "Aboriginal", when you want to include the numerous groups called Indians, Metis, Inu, Inuit, and anyone else descended from people already in Canada before anyone from Europe showed up. (This still puts the Iroquois, who emigrated from what is now the US into what is now Canada as allies of the British government, in a gray area.)
  • Columbus Circle in New York City is an ellipse that traffic goes around, and Circular Quay in Sydney is square. On the other hand, Herald Square and Times Square are roughly hourglass-shaped.
    • St. Peter's Square in Rome is elliptical. Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus in London are now crossroads, no longer the roundabouts they were when they were named. They are definitely not circuses.
  • Most Las Vegas hotel-casinos aren't actually in Las Vegas at all but in the neighboring town of Paradise. Of course they all use Las Vegas in their official addresses because technically Paradise is an unincorporated Census Designated Place.
  • Desierto de los Leones in Mexico City is nicknamed the place of the double lion: it's not a desert and there are no lions. The historical explanation is this: there lived a hermit named León and the area was (mostly) deserted at the time.
  • The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Breed's Hill.
  • In the U.S., many county names are ludicrously nonindicative. Wichita County, Kansas, for instance, not only doesn't contain Wichita, the largest city in the state, but is actually a hundred miles or so away. The city of Wichita is instead in Sedgwick County...and most of the town of Sedgwick actually lies in Harvey County.
    • The US city of Macon, Georgia, is not in Macon County, Georgia.
      • Nor is the nearby town of Forsyth in Forsyth County.
      • Georgia is really bad about this. See also Decatur, Lumpkin, Oglethorpe, Union (City)...
      • Savannah, Athens, and Rome...in Georgia.
    • Counties in Virginia do not include incorporated cities, but Frederick County is nowhere near Fredericksburg.
    • Kansas City, Missouri; Nevada, Missouri; Mexico, Missouri; Columbia, Missouri; Lebanon, Missouri; Versailles, Missouri; Vichy, Missouri; Vienna, Missouri; Houston, Missouri; Cleveland, Missouri. And half of them aren't even pronounced the way they're supposed to be.
      • Add to that the fact that Kansas City, Kansas, although technically a city, is considered a suburb of the much-larger Kansas City, Missouri.
      • Cuba, Missouri and Herculaneum, Missouri...
      • Also California, Missouri, as well as the former Kinderhook (according to That Other Wiki, named for Martin Van Buren's home city in New York) and Seneca (Native American tribe from New York relocated to Oklahoma) counties.
    • Also Michigan City, Indiana. Ireland, Indiana; Kokomo Indiana; Brazil, Indiana; Lebanon, Indiana; Peru, Indiana... We could go on a world tour and not leave the bloody state.
      • Versailles, Indiana, and Vincennes, Indiana, both named after places in France (although it isn't in Indiana, Paris, Illinois, has this trait as well). And Gnaw Bone. Which has nothing to do with gnawing bones, it's a bastardization of Narbon. Also, Santa Claus does not live in Santa Claus, IN, but he does have a mail processing center and the Holiday World amusement park there.
      • Vigo County in southwestern Indiana does contain a town called Vigo, but it isn't the county seat—that would be Terre Haute. Terre Haute itself comes from French words meaning "high land," but is situated in a rather flat part of the Midwest called the Wabash Valley.
      • For that matter, three hours north on US 41, you'll find a town (also?) called Highland, Indiana... which is every bit as flat as Terre Haute and no higher than any other town in the area.
      • Cyclone, Indiana (which has no cyclones); Russiaville, Indiana (which has nothing to do with Russia, and is pronounced "roo-sha-vill"); Forest, Indiana (not in or near a forest); Hillisburg, Indiana (the local Hillis family does not, in fact, live there); Frankfort, Indiana (unrelated to the dozen or so other Frankforts in the world); London, Indiana (the reason people have "London, England" Syndrome is because there are so dang many Londons); and South Bend, Indiana (which is at a place where a river bends...north).
    • California, Pennsylvania and Indiana, Pennsylvania have colleges that are traditional rivals: California of Pennsylvania and Indiana of Pennsylvania.
      • Are either of these near Wyoming, Pennsylvania?
    • Houston County, Texas is quite a ways away from the Greater Houston Area, which is centered in Harris County. There's also Paris, Rome, Washington-on-the-Brazos (which couples this trope with Exactly What It Says on the Tin), Palestine, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and so on.
      • Texas has dozens of these. It seems that pretty much everyone in the Alamo or at San Jacinto got a city and a county named after them. And none of them coincide.
    • Bourbon County, Kentucky, after which the distinctive American whiskey is named, does not contain any distilleries, the bourbon-producing regions having been parcelled off into other counties in the 19th century. Nor is it connected to the House of Bourbon.
    • In North Carolina, Plymouth is the county seat of Washington County. Washington is the county seat of Beaufort County. Beaufort is the county seat of Carteret County. Graham County and the city of Graham are about 300 miles apart. Neither Asheboro nor Asheville is in Ashe County. Neither Greensboro nor Greenville is in Greene County. Rockingham County borders Virginia, but the city of Rockingham borders South Carolina. The same applies to Scotland Neck and Scotland County, respectively. Confused yet?
    • You want to talk about a one-state world tour? Try Ohio. We've got London, Dublin, Athens, Geneva, Lebanon, Lima, Madeira, Ontario, Oregon, Oxford, Salem, Toronto, Troy, Wyoming, Alexandria, Amsterdam, Baltimore, Cairo, Holland, Lisbon, Milan, Moscow, Palestine, Poland, Rome, Russia, South Vienna, Verona, Versailles, and Warsaw.
      • Then there's Rio Grande—which, for some odd reason, is pronounced "RY-o" Grande.
      • In Ohio, there are two cities called Centerville and two cities called Middleton. They are in the four corners of the state.
      • In Ohio, Franklin and New Franklin are nowhere near Franklin County (or each other, for that matter); Washington Court House is a city, not a building; Minerva and Minerva Park are nowhere near each other; Union City is nowhere near Union County; Mount Sterling is located in Madison County, a very flat region with nothing remotely resembling mountainous terrain; and Crown City, with a population of only 411 people, is nowhere near big enough to be a proper city, and most likely lacks any actual royalty. Columbus and Columbus Grove are nowhere near each other, either.
      • Also In Ohio, the cities of Huron and Sandusky are not in Huron County and Sandusky County, respectively. They're both in Erie County. Also, Logan is not in Logan County—it's in Hocking County.
      • There's also a Newark in Ohio. And in about 17+ other places, which is why the original one calls itself Newark-On-Trent to anyone from outside the town...
      • Hamilton is in Butler County, not Hamilton County; Cincinnati is in Hamilton County.
    • Arizona now feels silly, even though we have "Fort X" where there's no fort, and Tuba City has nothing to do with the instrument.
    • Oregon has a city called Bend, and a city called North Bend. North Bend is about 250 miles from Bend, and is west-southwest of it. It's not on a river bend, either; it's on a bay.
    • Delaware County, Pennsylvania (the western suburbs of Philadelphia) is adjacent to, but not in, Delaware. The city of Chester is in Delaware County, not in adjacent Chester County; that's where "West Chester" is. Delaware County includes a Ridley, a Ridley Park, and a Ridley Creek Park (three different places); a "Radnor-Chester Road" that begins in Radnor but does not go to Chester, and a "Darby-Paoli Road" that does not go to either Darby or Paoli. There's also Overbrook golf course (not in Overbrook), the Philadelphia country club (not in Philadelphia), and Aronomink golf course (not in Aronomink).
    • North East, Pennsylvania is another city...located in the northwest corner of the state. It is however located in the northeast corner of Erie County.
    • West Allis, Wisconsin is not west of a city called Allis. There is also no East Allis, North Allis, or South Allis. West Allis is named after the "west" plant of the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co.
    • In the city of Milwaukee, North Street is south of Center Street. However, North Street is in the north side of town, making its name less non indicative than Center Street.
    • The only city in the U.S. named "Beach" is in North Dakota (which, for non-Americans who don't know, is landlocked).
      • Though it does have some nice beaches when it's not the winter near the Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea. Neither of which is anywhere near Beach.
    • Neither Henderson nor Hendersonville is in Henderson County, Tennessee.
    • How many of the twenty-some world cities named Springfield actually have a field, or disappear come late June/December?
    • Champaign, Illinois, is in Champaign County. This would seemingly imply that it is the county seat, but similarly to the Vigo County, Indiana, example above, it isn't -- Urbana is. Of course, Champaign and Urbana are right next to each other (which is why they're quite often referred to collectively as Champaign-Urbana or Urbana-Champaign), which might explain this.
    • Florida has a city called Seminole and a county named Seminole. But the city of Seminole is not in the county of Seminole. It also has Dade City- which is not in Dade County.
  • In Texas state agencies have nonindicative names to the point where a rule of thumb is that the more important the job sounds, the less power it has. The Railroad Commission, for example, has the power to regulate the state's oil and natural gas deposits. This goes on to the point where a common joke is that when George Bush was elected President of the United States, Rick Perry stepped down from his position as the most powerful man in Texas (the Lt. Governor) to become the Governor. It makes sense, however, since the Lt. Governor actually has more direct control over the state government than the Governor.
  • The Spanish Riding School is in Vienna.
  • The Spanish Stairs are located in Rome... and were made by the French.
    • However, they're in Spanish Square (Piazza di Spagna) and were created to make a link between the Spanish Embassy and the Holy See. So the name does make sense, just not in the "Viewers are Morons" kind of way you'd expect.
  • The French Quarter of New Orleans is made up of buildings of Spanish architecture. (This is because most of the city burned down in the late 18th century, and it was rebuilt while the Spanish controlled Louisiana.)
    • It was, however, the stronghold of the old French Creole culture in the city for many years.
    • If you are in central New Orleans and you want to go to the West Bank, you hop on a Mississippi River bridge heading, you guessed it, east.
  • The term "Latin" as in "Latin American" is in the strict sense a Non-Indicative Name (Latin is not an official language anywhere in Americas). In the loose sense it applies to any Romance language speaker—including but not limited to Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French. In the case of the Latin Quarter in Paris its usage is historically accurate, since it was once occupied by Latin-speaking university students.
    • To add to the complexity, "Latin America" was coined by the French when they controlled Mexico, to try to emphasize a common Latin-based identity of the Romance-language-speaking people of the Americas. But today, the French-speaking areas of North America are no longer generally considered to be part of Latin America, as it now mainly means Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas.
    • In Spanish, "Latinoamericano" is getting supplanted by "Hispanoamericano" or even more precise "Iberoamericano" (to include Brazil).
  • The Canary Islands were not named after those birds. They were named after the dogs brought to them by sailors -- canis in Latin. The birds then were named after the islands. This came up on QI and (of course) got a klaxon.
  • Madison Square Garden is a circular building.
    • It's also not a garden.
    • Nor do people madison there, haha. Properly parsed, however, it's still no longer at Madison Square.
  • Rhode Island is not an island. Three Mile Island is, but is not three miles long. (According to The Other Wiki, the latter got its name for being three miles downriver from the nearest town. Here is their explanation for the former's name.)
    • This can be explained by Rhode Island having originally been named "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations", with the latter occupying most of the territory, but the former being a convenient short name. To add to the confusion, the actual island has since been renamed Aquidneck Island, and Rhode Island no longer refers to anything other than the short name of the state.
  • The Kingdom of Sardinia had a naming situation similar to that of Rhode Island. Though named after the island of Sardinia which was in its possession, the Kingdom's capital was Turin on the north Italian mainland, and the center of political power was in the Piedmont region Turin was located in. Later as the Kingdom of Sardinia acquired more Italian lands, it just renamed itself to the Kingdom of Italy (now the modern Italian Republic).
    • This has its explanation as well: Savoy (that is, the continental part) was only a duchy, so the duke demanded the cession of Sicily (which was a kingdom) in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Sucession so he could use the title "king". When ruling the distant Sicily turned impractical, he just traded it for the closer Sardinia.
  • The Pennsylvania Dutch are not of Dutch descent, but rather German. The name comes from the German word for "Germanic," deutsch.
    • At the time they were named, "Dutch" was the common word for those West Germanic languages (and the people who spoke them) that were native to the European mainland instead of the British Isles and did not speak English or Scots. Only later did it more narrowly come to mean "from the Low Countries".
    • The term also only correctly applies to those Pennsylvanians whose ancestors immigrated from Germany prior to 1800; if the ancestor came after 1800, you're technically a Pennsylvania German, not Pennsylvania Dutch. Most are unaware of the distinction, however.
  • In Hawai'i, Hawaiian sweet bread is called Portuguese sweet bread. Though in fairness, it was made by Portuguese immigrants, though they came not from Portugal proper, but from Madeira and the Azores.
    • It's Portuguese sweet bread in Rhode Island, too.
  • In Ireland, the River Clare does not pass through County Clare; it's entirely located in County Galway.
  • Brazilian city Mar de Espanha (Spanish Sea)... which is not in Spain, and is on a state really far from the sea.
  • The Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California isn't a berry farm, but an amusement park. If you want the actual Berry Farm, head for Placentia.
    • That's because it was originally a berry farm by Walter Knott. Founded America's First Theme Park and also sold the first boysenberries (named after his supplier of them, Rudolph Boysen).
  • The New York Giants and the New York Jets football teams both play in New Jersey.
    • This sort of thing is not uncommon in the NFL. The Washington Redskins play in Landover, Maryland. The Buffalo Bills play in Orchard Park. The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, Texas. The Miami Dolphins is an odd case, they don't play in Miami but instead on Miami Gardens. The Patriots, oddly, subverts this trope when they moved from Boston to Foxborough, they changed their name from Boston Patriots to New England Patriots.
    • Similarly, Millwall FC are no longer located in Millwall (where their ground used to be is now Mudchute Park) but in New Cross, nor are Arsenal FC still associated with Woolwich Arsenal (they're in Highbury). Chelsea FC have never been located in (posh) Chelsea (the land prices are too high) but always in (neighbouring, working-class) Fulham.
  • The Southern Tier is directly north of the Northern Tier. They are in southern New York state and northern Pennsylvania, respectively.
  • Philadelphia, "The City of Brotherly Love", is widely regarded as one of the most hostile places in the United States, especially to opposing sports teams. (Three words: Booing Santa Claus.)
  • Vancouver Island does not contain either city named Vancouver.
  • America is located in the province of Brabant, the Netherlands.
  • Holland is a region in England. Or a manor in Lancashire. Or a city somewhere around the globe where the Dutch likely have been. It is not identical to "the Netherlands", but a ubiquitous misnomer no one's taking much trouble to correct. It stems from the dominance of the province of Holland when the Dutch dominated the oceans, before there was a national identity.
  • Upper Egypt was south of Lower Egypt. Upper Canada was south of Lower Canada. This is because they're named after their locations along the Nile and St. Lawrence rivers, not latitude. Both of these rivers flowed roughly northward to drain into the sea or ocean. Thus, Upper Egypt and Canada were up-river of their Lower counterparts.[9]
    • Upper Sandusky, Ohio, is south of Sandusky, and was named for a similar reason—it's farther up the Sandusky River.
  • Placerville, CA is in El Dorado County, not Placer County.
    • And Yuba City, CA is in Sutter County, not Yuba County.
  • Clapham Junction, the site of Britain's busiest railway station, is in Battersea, over a mile from the nearest part of Clapham. The story goes that when the railway arrived in the mid-1800s, the company preferred their shiny new station to be associated with trendy, upmarket Clapham rather than seedy, run-down Battersea; it was a triumph of marketing over accuracy.
  • Greenland is mostly ice and Iceland is mostly green. According to legend, the Vikings named these lands on purpose to confuse potential invaders, or perhaps to encourage settlement in Greenland.
    • According to historical records, the names were accurate when given.
  • The South Bank (that part of London's Albert Embankment which lies between Westminster and Waterloo Bridges) is east of the Thames. Although the Thames generally flows eastward, from Vauxhall to Waterloo it flows north.
  • Moon, Oklahoma is indeed not located on the moon, nor is North Pole, Oklahoma beyond the Arctic Circle.
  • In many German towns and cities, if there is a Rosenstraße (Rose Street) in the older part, there's a pretty good bet that in the old days this was where the town's prostitutes lived. One exception is Hamburg, where Rosenstraße and neighboring Lilienstraße (Lily Street) were situated on the knacker's yard. The streets took their names because the dead animals' bones lying around shone white like lilies and the neighborhood smelled as pleasant as roses.
  • In São Paulo the Consolação subway station is in Paulista Ave., while the Paulista station is in… Consolação Ave.
  • The Spanish town of Santillana del Mar (near the caves of Altamira, famous site of prehistoric paintings) is known as the "town of three lies": it's neither flat (llana) nor near the sea (del Mar), nor for that matter especially holy (santa).
  • Montreal directions are totally screwed up. The South Shore is due east of downtown Montreal and Montréal-Est is nearly due north of it. "Eastbound" buses run anywhere from northeast to due north (in Verdun and Pointe-aux-Trembles). This is due to considering the St. Lawrence River as running west to east, which it mostly does, but at Montreal it runs north-northeast. Someone called Montreal "the only city where the sun sets in the north."
  • The names of the English counties Derbyshire and Lancashire used to be indicative, but aren't any longer; their county towns are now Matlock and Preston respectively. The former was probably changed because Matlock is in the middle of the county, whilst Derby is on the eastern edge (not too far from Nottingham); likewise, Lancaster was in the middle of the pre-1968 Lancashire, but is now near the northern edge, whilst Preston is much nearer the middle. The counties haven't been renamed to match these changes, probably because "Matlockshire" and "Prestonshire" just sound wrong.
  • Winnipeg has a West End neighbourhood... right in the middle of everything. It used to be an indicative name, but the city of Winnipeg acquired the city of St. James just to its west in The Seventies. Similarly, there are the neighbourhoods-and-former-villages of West Kildonan, North Kildonan, and East Kildonan, all of which are in the northeast corner of the city - north of the North End, to boot - which are arranged respectively northwest to southeast, all of them south of "Old Kildonan."
    • The Red River isn't red.
    • St. John's Cathedral isn't on Cathedral Ave., but on Anderson.
    • West Broadway is no more broad than most other streets, and is considerably more narrow than Portage Avenue, nearby.
    • Fort Garry (the neighbourhood) is south of Upper Fort Garry (the fort), which is quite a ways south of Lower Fort Garry (the fort)
    • Harbour View golf course is not in view of a harbour. Harbour View South neighbourhood is so named because it's south of Harbour View golf course; it's at the northern edge of the city. (and still has no view of a harbour)
    • The Forks is not a fork in a river, but a confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
    • Before it was completed in the mid-'90s, the Perimeter Highway was this, only extended three quarters of the way around the city.
  • Forks, WA is not associated with any river forks.
  • The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia only has a Jewish population of 1.22%.
  • Newport News is not a newspaper or any other type of news organization, and it is also not a new type of cigarette from the Newport brand. It's a town in Virginia.
    • Nor is it new; The Other Wiki tells us that "it is the oldest English city name in the Americas". (At least it is a port.)
    • Also, Federal Way is not a type of national service or company, it's a town in Washington state.
  • The Sierra Nevada mountain range is not located in Nevada, but in neighboring California.
  • Denmark is not a country in Europe, it's a small town in Western Australia surrounded by massive trees.
  • The South China Sea borders several countries, but China doesn't even have a majority of its coastline. Likewise, the Sea of Japan could just as easily be called the Sea of Korea, and the Yellow Sea is not yellow. Nor is The Black Sea black or the Red Sea red (it may have been named after a certain reddish kind of polyp that once flourished in its waters).
  • The name of Siberia is derived from the (Russian) word for "winter", as is the Latin name of Ireland (Hibernia). In neither place is it winter all year round.
  • The country of Canada is named after the Huron-Iroquois word “kanata” meaning "village". (It's the second-largest country in the world.) Supposedly, this word had been misinterpreted very early; in 1535, two Aboriginal youths told French explorer Jacques Cartier about the route to kanata, referring to the village of Stadacona (the site of the present-day Québec). For lack of another name, Cartier used the word “Canada” to refer to the entire area controlled by its chief, Donnacona. There also used to be a town in Ontario called Kanata, before it was amalgamated into Ottawa - but that Kanata was too large to be classified as a village.
  • South Charleston, West Virginia is actually located north of the most of the city of Charleston, northwest to be precise. It gets its name because it sits on the south side of the Kanawha River, while Charleston proper sits on the north side of it due to the river's many bends.
  • Tierra del Fuego (Fire Land), which is located at the southernmost antarctic portion of Argentina.
    • But it got its name when explorers trying to round the cape saw the campfires of the local inhabitants.
  • Chatham Dockyard in England (now Chatham Historic Dockyard since the closure of the naval base) is almost entirely located in the neighbouring town of Gillingham.

Others

  • Manhattan's proposed Park51 community center, which was dubbed "the Ground Zero Mosque" by many in the American media, is not a mosque, and it's not located at Ground Zero. It's an Islamic Community Center with facilities open to the general public, and it's two blocks away from the original site of the World Trade Center.
    • An "Islamic Community Center" is a mosque, according to the various pages on The Other Wiki that discuss particular Islamic Community Centers. If that's wrong, then there are a lot of pages that need updating there... and, unlike ATT, they'll ask for citations.
  • Renaissance Festivals are typically based on England in the Medieval period or the Elizabethan period (sometimes a combination of both), but they have next to nothing to do with the culture of Renaissance Italy.
    • One of the most popular traveling acts on the Renaissance Festival circuit is a comedy trio called "The Tortuga Twins".
  • The Oedipus Complex is named after a character that didn't have it: Oedipus didn't know that the man that he murdered was his father or that the woman that he married was his mother, and was revolted by both revelations. Moreover, he wasn't in love with his mother, and he didn't hate his father—he killed his father after a chance encounter with him, and he only married his mother (the queen) because of the wealth and power that it entailed.
  • The Big Ten Conference in collegiate athletics has had eleven members since 1990. The number eleven is hidden within the logo, but the name "Big Ten" has been rendered nonindicative. Chalk it up to the Grandfather Clause.
    • With the defection of Nebraska (and less relevantly, Colorado), the Big Ten now has twelve members, and the Big Twelve has ten.
    • Similarly, the Atlantic 10 conference actually has thirteen full-time members.
  • When a foreign language has a word that looks like English or a different language, but turns out to mean something completely different. These are false friends, or, in French, faux amis.
    • Spanish Protip: A guy cannot say "Estoy embarazado" since embarazo means pregnancy, not embarrassment. Okay, Mister Seahorse can, but that's it! Girls are also recommended to not say it unless they've recently been knocked up.
    • Similarly, "excitado" does not mean "excited". It means "sexually aroused".
    • Bizarro means brave, not weird or strange (though many Spanish speakers forget this). Egregio means illustrious or distinguished, but you can still drink up if you want. "Egregious" used to mean the same thing in English too.
    • The Slovak and Czech term for "(economic) competition" - "konkurencia/konkurence" - sounds awfully similar to the English word "concurrence", which, of course, means "parallel progress". The terms clearly stem from the same roots of international vocabulary, but have likely experienced quite a big shift in the semantics of said vocabulary...
    • People have drawn the wrong conclusion about Romans for years because of the word "vomitorium." It sounds like a place to unload some food and drink during a really long party. In reality, it's a stadium exit - because a properly-designed one will spew people out rapidly once the games are over.
    • While not all Wasei-eigo in Japanese are these, some indeed do not mean the same as the word they sound like. For example, "マンション" is pronounced the same way as "mansion" but actually means apartment or condominium, while "ホーム" sounds like "home" but refers to a railway platform.
    • False cognates are words that looks similar and have similar meanings, but are completely unrelated. Not the same as false friends (which can sometimes be cognates).
      • An example would be the Greek word θεός (theos) and the Nahuatl teotl; both words mean "god" in their respective languages but we're pretty sure ancient Greece and the Aztec Empire never had contact with one another outside of a game of Civilization (wherein one probably conquered the other).
      • In Finnish and Japanese, "matto" means a carpet or a floor rug. It's even pronounced the same way. There are in fact two hypotheses proposing a genetic relationship between Finnish and Japanese, but the etymology of this specific word has nothing to do with that.
      • In Mbabaram, an extinct Australian Aboriginal language completely unrelated to English, the word for "dog" is "dog".
      • The Indonesian word 'air' means water in English.
      • The word "yama" means "mountain" in Japanese and "pit" in Russian.
  • The word inflammable, that misleadingly means the same as flammable. We owe that to the Latin language, since it comes from the verb inflamare. Raise the subject in public and make sure to get marshmallows.

Dr. Nick: "Inflammable" means "flammable"?! What a country!

    • For those who are curious, the word you would use to indicate that something is not prone to catching fire is "nonflammable". You may believe such a word to be superfluous, but believe us, we've tried.
  • A number of wars are referred to by either incorrect or misleading names.
    • The Social War was not a Roman civil war, but a war against the subject Italian cities. Socii was Latin for 'allies,' and the name was just carried forward. The same applies to an earlier conflict between Athens and its allies.
    • The Hundred Years War lasted 116 years.
      • And the Eighty Years War lasted for 68 years of fighting, but 80 from beginning to end. The Twelve Years' Truce separated two lengthy periods of warfare. Also, only one of the parties involved (The Netherlands and Spain) considers it a war.
    • The French and Indian War was not France vs. the indigenous peoples of the American continent. The French and Indians fought together against the British. (There were Indians on the British side too.) Dave Barry Slept Here refers to this confusion, further asserting, "The British didn't even realize they were suppose to be in this war until several years after it started, by which time the French and the Indians, totally confused, had inflicted heavy casualties upon each other."
      • The French and Indian War was actually just one theater of a larger conflict known as the Seven Years' War, which lasted nine years... in America; in Europe the war started after a two year delay.
      • Some historians have called the period of fighting between Britain and France from roughly 1689 to 1815 (including the Seven Years' War) the "Second Hundred Years' War." Actual length, 126 years.
    • La Guerra de los Pasteles (literally cake wars) was fought because of complaints made by a French baker whose property was damaged during previous battles in Mexico.
      • The baker was among one of the many complainers who got their property damaged among the conflicts. Now it is told he may not even existed.
    • The War of 1812 lasted three years (from January 1812 to February 1815). At least it began in 1812.
  • Arabic numerals are from India. They got the name because Europeans learned them from Arabs.
    • Arabs call them Hindu numerals.
    • They're also sometimes known as Hindu-Arabic numerals.
    • And the European, Arabic and Indian sets of numerals are all somewhat different.
  • Exploding head syndrome. Does involve heads, does not involve explosions.
  • Team Shanghai Alice. It is not based in Shanghai and only contains one member, whose name isn't Alice. And... okay, technically Touhou does have a character named Alice (who owns a puppet named Shanghai), but this is probably unrelated.
    • Also, a character from the fifth game, Yuki. Her name means Snow.
  • The correct legal definition of "assault" doesn't actually refer to assaulting anything, but making a threat (if they carry is out, it's battery). The phrase "assault and battery" has blurred the line in the public eye, so that many people think that assault is battery. But they are, in fact, different things.
    • Also, while "battered" is commonly understood to refer to serious physical harm, "battery" legally means any unwanted physical contact. Breathing on someone might even qualify.
  • The Underground Railroad was underground only in the political sense (secret) and was not a railroad. It was so called partly because rail transport was a novel idea at the time.
    • Of course, openly calling it the "Slave Escape Network" would have hampered its operations.
  • The Guilford College Yachting Club is home to the "geek club" centering itself on sci-fi, gaming, and anime - they put on a con called "What the Hell Con" which has an incredibly indicative name. Legend has it that the geeks took over a real club about boats and need the longevity of the club's name to get the level of funding they need.
  • The linchpin of Einstein's two theories of relativity is that certain things (like the laws of physics and speed of light) are not relative to your frame of reference.
  • Imaginary and Supernatural numbers are both very much real.[10] Complex numbers are also quite simple.
  • The Scripps National Spelling Bee has had contestants from outside the US since 1997.
  • The National Hockey League went international seven years after it was formed, with the first foreign team - the Boston Bruins - joining in 1924. Nowadays, there are over three times as many foreign teams as there are national ones, and the championship has been won by foreign teams every year since 1994.[11] Strangely, the minor-league International Hockey League currently[when?] includes teams from the U.S. only.
  • The National Basketball Association hosts one team from outside the US as of the late 2010s (the Toronto Raptors) and used to host the Vancouver Grizzlies before they moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
  • Selective Service, at least from the perspective of the person being selected, is neither selective nor a service.
  • The school colors of Green High School (near Akron, Ohio) are orange and black.
  • The Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 originated in the American Midwest. It was called Spanish Flu because Spanish newspapers were the only ones reporting about it freely. This was because the disease nearly killed King Alphonse XIII of Spain, making it massive news for the Spaniards, and also because the country was neutral in World War I, and thus was not subjected to war-time censorship. And it didn't go away in 1919, either; there were regular outbreaks of the H1N1 virus at least until the COVID-19 pandemic a century later.
  • None of the races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup could be considered sprints. Sprint is the telecommunications company that sponsors the series.
    • Of course, no one believed the NASCAR "Insert Name Here" Cup were Winstons or Nextels either.
  • Oktoberfest is held in September in most areas.
  • Baseball's World Series only involves teams from North America.
    • Also in baseball, prior to 1994, the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds played in the National League's Western division. Both cities are farther east than Chicago and St. Louis, whose teams, the Cubs and Cardinals respectively, played in the National League East. Major League Baseball fixed this issue in 1994 when they realigned the divisions. Atlanta was placed in the Eastern division where it belonged, and the other three teams went into the newly created Central division.
    • Except for a few brief seasons in the early and middle 20th century, the Chicago White Sox have never worn white stockings.
      • During several seasons, and for decades-long stretches, the Boston Red Sox have eschewed red stockings.
      • For roughly half the 20th century, the Cincinnati Reds' dominant uniform color was navy blue.
      • Throughout their existence, the New York/San Francisco Giants have generally fielded men of ordinary height.
    • While we're talking about division alignments in sports... the NFL. Yes, we really have to go there. A quick summary:
      • From 1995 to 2001, the Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys (both in the southwestern US) were in the NFC East, while four of the five teams in the NFC West were east of Dallas.[12]
      • For at least the 2011-2012 season, the Winnipeg Jets play in the NHL's Southeast division. Justified, as they were the Atlanta Thrashers the previous season.
      • Further, many teams that play in the NHL's Western Conference would play in other league's Eastern Conferences (Specifically, the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets). At the very least, they label the division they play in the "Central Division", though they're still east of the center of the US. However, Detroit borders central Canada, so this division assignment makes sense.
  • RPG no longer describes most of the video games the label is attached to anymore, and makes even less sense when spelled out. Even before game-makers were jumping on the bandwagon to add RPG Elements, the meaning had been diluted for over a decade by JRPGs, so few reviewers bother to challenge them with: "What makes this a Role. Playing. Game?"
    • Besides, early RPGs were actually simple adventure games heavy on tactical combat with no actual role-playing in the strict sense of this word. They were, and for the most part, still are devoid of elaborate dialogues and reactive world typical for the real RPGs.
  • The months September through to December are so called because they were originally the seventh to tenth months, in the pre-Julian calendar which only regularly had ten months (likewise July and August were back then called "Quintilis" and "Sextilis" respectively).
  • Georgia College has an event each semester right before finals called Midnight Breakfast. It starts at 10pm and goes till 11:45.
  • The British "Special Air Service" (SAS) is actually part of the British Army. It was named such to make the Axis forces think there was a paratrooper regiment. They do make drops from helicopters, though.
  • The Danish political party "Radikale Venstre" (Radical left) is possibly the most centre-oriented party in Danish politics.
    • Same thing with the French Radical party (it's in the center). It only got this name historically in the 19th century when it was radically in favour of laicity and republicanism, and the name stuck. And the left radicals are just its center-left wing.
      • 'Radical' doesn't mean left-wing, though, it just means in favour of radical action and/or change.
  • The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is a pretty-much radical far right party advocating Pinochet-esque dictatorship. Or rather was; nowadays they are more or less political clowns and no one takes them seriously.
    • The origin of this party's name is that it was formed in 1980s, when the Soviet Union was slowly crumbling apart and "liberal" and "democratic" were buzzwords of instant political success.
  • Rationalization doesn't usually involve very much reason or rationality at all.
  • Scorpion Racing is a Canadian manufacturer of dirt bike parts that has nothing to do with racing scorpions.
  • Tap out, which is the name of a submission combat sport, would probably be confused for a harmless children's game if somebody didn't even know what the actual sport was about.
  • The permafrost, which is perpetually frozen soil in the Arctic, is not really permanent at all, as proven by climate change especially in some worst-case scenarios. In fact, it's actually more of a reverse supervolcano: while real supervolcanoes are continent-sized volcanoes that can level entire continents (especially the one said volcano is on) and cause rapid cooling of the Earth's climate due to the release of huge amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere, permafrost does the opposite, where it will cause rapid warming because of the storage of carbon dioxide and methane, both greenhouse gases produced by rotting organic material inside the permafrost, with the latter being 25 times more powerful than the former but short-lived, hence even the least severe cases might still lead to rapid climate change.
    • Also, positive and negative feedbacks. Despite their name, such feedbacks do the opposite of what their names suggest: positive feedbacks worsen such a situation, while negative feedbacks weaken it. Besides the permafrost example above, there's also the albedo feedback, where a reduction of ice would result in less heat being reflected by the Earth's surface, leading to even greater reduction of ice; and the water vapor feedback, where evaporation of water (itself too a greenhouse gas) leads to more warming, which leads to even more evaproration, and in the worst case of the latter, it also destroys the water molecules in the process as a warm enough temperature will result in the molecule being split apart by ultraviolet radiation, sending the hydrogen atoms flying into space, as demonstrated on Venus. Ice ages are often caused and hastened the same way, but with the opposite factors. Heck, any negative feedback can become a positive feedback if they work too well.
  • The Afrikaans language is not native to Africa; it's a Germanic language derived from Dutch. It is spoken in the country of South Africa, but nowhere else on the continent.
  • The late Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" was the last lecture he gave as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, but not the very last lecture in his life. He gave a lecture on time-saving at the University of Virginia, where he formerly taught, two months later.
  • The Catholic Church. "Catholic" means "all-encompassing". Nowadays, it most certainly is not. This stretches back to the 11th century, where they continued calling themselves "the Catholic Church" when the Eastern Orthodox Church split off.
  • "Feminism," which is basically the idea that men and women are, generally speaking, mentally and morally equal, and should be treated equally, is easily misunderstood as anything from a cause that only matters to or benefits women, to outright female supremacism.
  • Most surnames come from nicknames that described someone's appearance, recent family lineage, birthplace, occupation or personality. These nicknames got turned into surnames that get passed down to people that they no longer describe. We all know Smiths who aren't smiths and MacDonalds whose fathers aren't named Donald.
  • The word denude means the exact opposite of putting clothes on.
  • Many Portuguese parties have names leftier than their ideologies, specially the main ones: the Social Democratic Party is actually the centre-right party and the Socialist Party is actually just centre-left. This is because they were formed after a revolution against a fascist dictatorship, a time when everyone was left (compared to the last 40 years of ruling government) and anything that was right was "salazarist" (as in "Salazar" the dictator of said fascist state).
  • The typical government warehouse does not house wares. Or governments.
  • Zigzagged with Little Caesars pizza. The popular franchise's name was a nickname of co-founder Marian Ilitch, used by her husband, but neither has ever explained how she got the nickname.
  • Despite having a ceremonial start and finish at Monte Carlo itself, the Monte Carlo Rally largely takes place in nearby towns within the French Alps, namely Gap and Valence, given how minuscule Monaco is, leaving next to no room for a rally to take place in the micronation itself.
  • Zigzagged with "teen" pornography: they are so called because the models who appear in such films are youthful enough to pass off as 'teenagers', but for obvious legal reasons they are required to be of legal age, which happens to be eighteen; technically they are in their late teens age-wise but on a legal standpoint they are considered adults, thus allowing them to appear in an adult movie production without any legal repercussions.
  1. ↑ It depends on what font you're using and whether it's upper- or lowercase. Sometimes it actually is a double U.
  2. ↑ And to complicate matters, the name for "cannonball" or "ball&chain" is boulet.
  3. ↑ which, for that matter, aren't even fruit anyways...now hush
  4. ↑ The sauce contains tomatoes; supposedly, it was invented for some Spanish dignitaries, who had brought tomatoes--a crop from their New World colonies--to France.
  5. ↑ It's Sauce Espagnole with Africanesque spices.
  6. ↑ It's a sort of custard, and given that the English do like custard, that's fair.
  7. ↑ French for 'things from Vienna'
  8. ↑ The weird thing is that hoaxers honestly think this is a logical debate technique.
  9. ↑ So these are not in fact non-indicative names, it is just that people who proceed from the arbitrary mapmaking analogy "North = Up" and "South = Down" should take precedence over real real life. (Note: in many medieval maps, East was at the top). If Upper Canada was south of Lower Canada, then the Sun rises in the north and sets in the south. Looking at any map will show that Upper Canada was west of Lower Canada. But, as has already been mentioned, this has absolutely nothing to do with how the places were named.
  10. ↑ Though not in the mathematical sense
  11. ↑ Yes, Eagleland Tropers, as far as the NHL is concerned, you're all foreigners.
  12. ↑ The Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints had been in the West since 1970, the St. Louis Rams moved from Los Angeles in 1995 and stayed in the West, and the Carolina Panthers joined the West in 1995 as well. The only NFC West team that was actually in the western US at the time was the San Francisco 49ers.
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