The Origin of Everyday

Sunday

“Eke” is an Old English word meaning “also.” Hence, another name you went by was called “an eke-name,” which eventually morphed into “a nickname.”

Monday

Using the name “John Doe” for an anonymous or identity-protected person traces back to an abandoned British legal procedure called an “action of ejectment.” Due to legal complexities, the process often moved faster when fictitious names were used to more quickly determine the rights of the real-life parties, and “John Doe” was frequently the fictitious plaintiff and “Richard Roe” the fictitious defendant. Exact reasons for the use of these names are unclear, but John and Richard were (and still are) common English names, and “doe” and “roe” are both deer-related terms: a doe is a female deer, and roe a Eurasian deer species widespread in England. More recently, “Jane Doe” became the female equivalent of “John Doe,” though the also-anonymous “Roe” made it into the landmark US Supreme Court abortion case of Roe v. Wade before the plaintiff revealed her real name.

Tuesday

“Santa Claus” is derived from “Sinter Klass,” the Dutch nickname of Sint Nikolaas, or Saint Nicholas.

Wednesday

It wasn’t until the year 1066 that the idea of last names really caught on in England, and many last names now common in the US began simply as ways to identify who’s son somebody was (Johnson, Anderson, Robertson, etc.) or what their profession was (Smith, Miller, Baker, Taylor, Potter, Cook, Mason, Cooper, etc.). Many Hispanic surnames also indicate a father’s name (Rodriguez = son of Rodrigo, Hernandez = son of Hernando, etc.).

Thursday

In Western cultures, the practice of giving a child a middle name was uncommon until the 1700s, except to indicate a higher status in society (such as in old Rome) or among cultures who included a lot of earlier generation’s family names, like Arabic and Spanish names. Later, Europeans’ options for the occasional middle name were either a saint or ancestor, but by the 1800s, middle name choices were wide open in the US and Europe. By WWI middle names were common in Western cultures and remain so.

Friday

All living species, once discovered by science, are given a scientific or Latin name in addition to their common name. You are a modern human, AKA homo sapien sapiens. The scientific name of a newly discovered or named species is often chosen in honor of someone and is then Latin-ized. Among the many famous people with species named for them (and often insects and spiders) are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mick Jagger, David Attenborough, Lady Gaga, Matt Groening, Liv Tyler, Johnny Cash, Steven Colbert, Harrison Ford, and quite a few political leaders and Greek philosophers.

Saturday

In China, one term for “commoners” translates to “the old 100 surnames.” While there are now over 4,000 family names in China, the top 100 cover a remarkable 85% of the population. The ten most common names are Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu, and Zhou.

Sunday

Since at least the 17^th century, people have been saying that a dubious idea or explanation “doesn’t hold water.” The allusion is to a useless container which can’t carry liquid, the same idea conveyed when calling a story “full of holes.”

Monday

Newborn babies are typically wet with amniotic fluid, so “wet behind the ears” means someone new and inexperienced. Curiously, the term “dry behind the years,” for an experienced person, is about as old, but has not survived into common parlance.

Tuesday

A momentous life happening is sometimes called a “watershed moment.” This is actually a geological reference, since a watershed can be a ridge or mountain chain (like the Great Divide) which determines the direction which water flows down either side of it.

Wednesday

“Water under the bridge” has flowed past and cannot be recovered, so this term applies to past conflicts that may as well be forgiven, akin to “letting bygones be bygones.” This phrase is several centuries old, and seems based on the earlier expression “There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since…,” suggesting much time has passed since the earlier event. A less-common variant is “water over the dam.”

Thursday

The term “rain check” for postponing something to a later date, began at American baseball games in the 1880s. Since baseball games can be “rained out,” or cancelled due to rain, a rain check was a voucher to attend a future game in place of the rained-out match.

Friday

Think you can smell rain coming, especially after several dry days? That harbinger scent is a chemical called petrichor. This compound is a combination of oils from plants but also geosmin, an alcohol produced by actinobacteria in the soil. These bacteria pick up the pace of their decomposition work when the air grows humid before rain and produce more geosmin, which humans can detect in petrichor and associate with rain.

Saturday

What causes wet dog smell? Dogs, like many mammals, carry around lots of bacteria, yeast and other microorganisms on their fur and skin. When a dog gets wet, some waste of these little tagalongs evaporates and humans detect it.

Sunday

Fans of “The Godfather” know that the fate of a certain beefy family associate was to “sleep with the fishes.” The term indicates disposing of a murder victim in water, but similar terms go back much further than the 1970s. One identical reference goes back to 1836, and another all the way back to The Illiad, via a translation to “Make your bed with the fishes now…”

Monday

The term “small fry” to describe an inconsequential person or thing does not derive from fried potatoes, but more likely newly-hatched fish, also called “fries.”

Tuesday

The term “jumped the shark” describes a television show which has peaked and is now in decline. This began with a 5th season special episode of “Happy Days” in which a waterskiing Fonzie accepts the challenge of a beach rival to launch off a ski jump over a caged shark. Critics considered this a resort to gimmickry over strong writing (though the show aired for five more highly-rated seasons, and Henry Winkler got to show off his formidable real-life wasterskiing skills).

Wednesday

Fish are indeed slimy, and for very practical reasons. Fish slime reduces drag while swimming, wards off parasites and pathogens, and even soothes open fish wounds. The slime also facilitates gas and water exchange across the skin, balances electrolytes, offers sunscreen, and in some cases gives the fish advantages over prey and against predators.

Thursday

To make someone wholly believe something “hook, line, and sinker” refers to a fish which has taken the bait completely by swallowing this much fishing gear and is now very unlikely to escape.

Friday

People describing a problem drinker as someone who “drinks like a fish” should clarify that they mean saltwater fish. Freshwater fish don’t do this because it would overdilute their blood and body fluids. Saltwater fish, however, drink a lot to balance fresh water lost from their bodies to their salty surroundings, and their kidneys remove the salt while their gills pump the salt back into the water around them.

Saturday

Ever wonder what happens to the fish when lakes freeze in the winter? They hang out at the liquid bottom. Ice is less dense than water, so it floats, and water bodies freeze from the top down. The water below gets denser with depth, and with more density comes slightly higher temperatures. As a result, water deeper than 1 meter won’t freeze, and lucky for the fish, this deep water is usually quite oxygen-rich. Their metabolism and breathing slow, and their body chemistry accommodates this cold, slow environment.

Sunday

The color red has been associated with communism since the 20^th century, so the expression “Better dead than red” connotes a firm rejection of communism, while “Better red than dead” showed more compromise, especially among Cold War-era opponents of nuclear weapons.

Monday

The first reference to a “red hand,” which you have when caught “red handed,” comes from a Scottish law from 1432. Unsurprisingly, the red was blood, which came from murder or poaching.

Tuesday

Did you ever “paint the town red” on some wild night? The origin of this one is fairly literal. Notorious hellraiser Marquis of Waterford led his drunken buddies through the town of Melton Mowbray in England one night in 1837, and after breaking windows and flowerpots, the raucous crew procured some red paint and redecorated several doors, a tollgate, and a swan statue. Once sober, they had to compensate the damaged town.

Wednesday

Long before Hollywood or modern politics, the tradition of famous or important people walking down a red carpet in formal events began in ancient Greece. One reason for the associations between the color red and prestige is that red dye was particularly difficult to make and therefore expensive.

Thursday

Businesses operating at a loss are said to be “in the red.” This term goes back to the bookkeeping and accounting practice, first cited in 1907, of using red ink to denote financial loss. Conversely, financially solvent businesses are “in the black” for this color ink.

Friday

Bureaucratic fuss is implied by the term “red tape” because in the 16^th century, Spain’s King Charles V’s began the practice of tying rolls of important administrative documents with red tape when they more urgently needed review by higher-level officials.

Saturday

The term “red herring” denotes a deliberately misleading clue or diversion. This was first used in literature in 1807 by journalist William Cobbett when he described using this pungent cooked fish (which turns from silver to red-brown with cooking) as a boy to distract hounds chasing the scent of a hare. The story was used as a metaphor for the press of the day, which had been distracted from covering essential domestic matters by false news of Napoleon’s defeat.

Sunday

LASER = Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

Monday

TASER = Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle. This was the title of a 1911 young adult adventure novel starring Tom Swift, childhood hero of Jack Cover, the NASA researcher and inventor who completed the first taser in 1974.

Tuesday

RADAR = RAdio Detection And Ranging

Wednesday

SCUBA = Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

Thursday

ZIP Code = Zone Improvement Plan

Friday

CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (also see: Alan Turing’s test for evaluating machine intelligence).

Saturday

CARE Package® = Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe

Sunday

For centuries, doctors associated insanity and other medical afflictions with lunar cycles, hence the terms “lunatic” and “lunacy” to describe an affected person.

Monday

Since most nuts, like the human head, are hard with valuable contents, people have used “nut” as slang for “head” since at least the mid-1800s. The term “off his nut” described someone who seemed separated from his head and senses, and this was later shortened to just “nuts.”

Tuesday

An unpredictable and dangerous person is sometimes called a “loose cannon.” Early cannons of the wooden ship days were not yet secured in fixed spots, but had wheels and could be rolled to different gunports on the ship. When one of these extremely heavy guns broke loose on deck during bad weather or battle, the “loose cannon” was a clear danger to nearby crewmen, often causing gruesome and fatal injuries.

Wednesday

The word “demented” comes the Latin “dementare” or “out of one’s mind.”

Thursday

If you’ve ever described someone as “going berserk,” you were invoking the name of ancient Norse warriors known for fighting with wild fervor and other acts of brutality. Berserker translates to “bearskin,” as animal skins were often part of the warriors’ attire. This fact is also thought to contribute to the European werewolf legends.

Friday

Many ancient civilizations considered insanity to be caused by possession by evil spirits or demons, as did many religions. For example, Jesus casts devils and demons out of the afflicted in several Bible passages.

Saturday

Cuckoo birds are likely considered “crazy,” because of their repetitive, incessant calls and habit of placing their eggs in the nests of other birds. By some accounts, male cuckoos are crazy for tolerating their partner’s infidelity and outsourced childrearing, and the polyandrous female is crazy because she “fools around.”

Palmatier, Robert Allen, Speaking of Animals: A Dictionary of Animal Metaphors, Greenwood Press, 1995 (page 105)

Sunday

“Google” is a misspelling of the number called “googol,” which is a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. The search engine was named for this huge number to indicate it’s intention to search through immense amounts of information, which it certainly does.

Monday

Your Bluetooth devices are named for a 10th century viking king who needed a dentist. Harald Gormsson was a Scandinavian ruler who united Denmark and Norway, all while sporting a prominent dead, dark blue-grey tooth that earned him the nickname “Bluetooth.” Early Bluetooth engineers, seeking to “unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link” used the name in honor of this uniter king, but it was only meant to be temporary. When the other proposed names were found to be trademarked, only “Bluetooth” was left for the upcoming launch. What’s more, the Bluetooth logo is the old king’s initials as written in ancient Danish runes.

Tueday

The term “yahoo” was first coined by Johnathan Swift in his 1726 book Gulliver’s Travels. The yahoos were a primitive humanoid race, “brute[s] in human form,” who happened to be ruled by a race of super-intelligent horses. The modern search engine’s name is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” but Yahoo creators also chose the name because they liked it’s uncouth connotation from Swift’s book.

Wednesday

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs came up with the name after returning from an Oregon apple orchard. He thought the name sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating” and was also on one of his “fruitarian” diets at the time. An added advantage: the “A” word would be closer to the front of the phone book.

Thursday

Twitter (later renamed X) founders originally considered the names “Status,” “FriendStalker,” “Vibrate,” and “Dodgeball,” but a dictionary search encountered the word “twitter” and a definition of “a short burst of inconsequential information; chirps from birds,” which sounded spot-on. It was initially called “twttr” in the mold of flickr, but reverted back to Twitter later.

Friday

Originally called “The facebook,” Facebook’s name came from the the list of student and staff directory and profiles which freshmen at founder Mark Zuckerberg’s then-school Harvard were given.

Saturday

Craigslist is named for founder Craig Newmark, who started the site in 1995 as a hobby after emailing some dozen friends about interesting San Fransisco happenings. As more people sought to be added to the listserve and asked for info on other things, including tech jobs, he created the site.

Sunday

The sky is blue because of basic physics. The sun shines all the colors of visible light on the Earth, but the color we see as blue is made of the shortest, smallest wavelengths. For this reason, it scatters the most when hitting air molecules in our atmosphere, making the sky appear as blue due to the greatest scattering of blue’s short wavelengths.

Monday

Your blood is red because of iron and oxygen. Within your red blood cells is hemoglobin, a protein made of an iron based compound called heme. Heme binds with the oxygen you breathe, and the oxygen-iron bond reflects light to appear red. Elsewhere in the animal world, blood can be yellow, green, blue, or purple, and in the “Star Trek” universe, Mr. Spock’s is green, because Vulcan blood is copper based rather than iron based.

Tuesday

Grass is green because of chlorophyll. Grass, plants, trees, algae, and even some bacteria have the impressive ability to make their own food out of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. The pigment which does this work is chlorophyll, which reflects green light and so appears green to us.

Wednesday

Water is not blue because it reflects the sky, but appears blue for a similar reason that that sky does. The water absorbs long-wavelength yellow, orange and red colors and reflects short-wavelength colors, mostly blue. Since blue is the color reflected back to our eyes, it appears blue.

Thursday

This same reason our sky appears blue also explains the sun’s appearance from Earth. Our sun is white when seen from space, but our atmosphere scatters the sun’s shorter-wavelength blue / indigo / violet-range colors such that longer-wavelength red / orange / and yellow colors within sunlight reach us more easily, and the sun usually appears as one of these colors.

Friday

Incoming light refracts within water droplets while they’re in the air to separate the colors which compose white light, all of which move at slightly different speeds. With the droplets acting like a prism and a color separater, we can then see those individual colors as a rainbow. In addition to familiar rainbows, there are also “moonbows” and “fogbows.”

Saturday

Hair follicles produce less color as they age, and the result is that your hair eventually appears white with no color to change it…unless you add some from a bottle. However, genetics and disease also play a role in hair color.