In a horror movie about demon possessions, you’re going to want to know the name of the demon if you ever hope to get it out of somebody. Names have power. And the real world, your name can affect how people treat you. Employers are known to engage in discrimination against potential employees based solely on their names. On the other hand, if your name shares a first initial with someone else, they may be more likely to be attracted to you.
There’s a lot to consider when it comes to names, not the least of which is where names come from. Some may be ransom, some well thought out, and some are just weird.
10. Beverly Hills Gets Its Name From a Beaver-Filled English Lake
Thanks to pop culture and films like Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Beverly Hills Cop, and Beverly Hills Ninja, most of us who have never been to California are pretty convinced that Beverly Hills is the swankiest place on Earth. And it’s true, there’s a lot of fancy stuff going on in Beverly Hills. What none of those movies took the time to tell us is: Why is the place called Beverly Hills?
The hills part seems easy enough, you have to assume there are Hills there, right? Who was Beverly? There was no one named Beverly.
Back in 1906, a man named Burton Green created a company called the Rodeo Land and Water Company. Green and his partners had been drilling unsuccessfully for oil in the area of modern-day Beverly Hills. Green and his wife named the land Beverly Hills after Beverly Farms, the place in Massachusetts where Green grew up.
Now you might think Beverly Farms was named after Beverly. But it got its name from the town of Beverly Massachusetts and that place, in turn, took its name from the town of Beverly in Yorkshire, England. Settlers named it that back in 1668.
So, in 1668 England, who was Beverly? Waaaay back in the day, Beverly was called Inderawuda, after a church there. But in the 10th century, locals renamed it Beverlac because it was built on a lake full of beavers. Beverlac meant Beaver Lake. Fast forward a few years and Beverlac evolved into Beverly by the year 1037. So, technically, Beverly Hills is Beaver Lake Hills, after a beaver-saturated town in England a thousand years ago.
9. Boycott Comes from Charles Boycott, Who Everyone Hated
You can’t swing a cat on social media these days without running across a call to boycott something. A business, a person, a product, whatever. There’s always someone out there trying to organize a campaign to explain why something sucks. The word boycott is just an easier way to say it. The origin of the word boycott is an interesting one, however.
Boycott comes to us from a man named Charles Boycott. In the 1800s, Boycott was an English land agent working in Ireland. A land agent was someone who represented the land owner, typically some sort of nobility. In Boycott’s case, he worked for John Crichton, 3rd Earl of Erne. Crichton owned 40,386 acres in Ireland and Boycott oversaw some of that. His duties required him to collect rent from 35 tenants.
In 1879, times were tough in Ireland and another famine, less well known than the Great Famine, was affecting western Ireland. Rural folks, like those on Crichton’s land, organized to try to reduce their rent in order to overcome these hard times. They asked Boycott for a 25% reduction.
Boycott, known for being brutal in evictions already, was not having it so the community rallied against him. His employees were urged to stop working for him. Local shops would not do business with him. Everyone ostracized him in the community and would have nothing to do with him. He was boycotted.
Boycott tried to fight back and made things worse. It became international news and inspired countless other boycotts. Eventually, he left Ireland in disgrace.
8. Kobe Bryant’s Parents Named Him After the Beef
Kobe Bryant was one of the biggest names in basketball before his untimely death in 2020. He also had a remarkably unique name which, before his fame, most people had only encountered in one place: Japanese beef. And if you ever wondered how he got his name, well, that was it. His parents really liked a Japanese restaurant that used the word in its name.
Bryant was so big that his name has been attributed to the global popularity of the beef. The head of Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association in Japan believes Bryant’s name led to the global rise in knowledge of and demand for the beef, all because Bryant’s mother and father were said to have loved the meat and the restaurant where they first tried it.
7. Neanderthal Comes From a German Pastor and Poet
Once upon a time, we used to call Neanderthals cavemen. Then we learned that there were a lot of other kinds of proto-humans like Denisovans and Flores Man and so on so we came up with a better name. Neanderthals get their name from the Neander Valley in Germany where they were first discovered in 1856. That doesn’t seem mysterious at all, right? But what does Neander mean?
The Neander Valley was named for a preacher and a poet who visited the place frequently. The pastor’s name was Joachim Neumann, and this is where things get sort of needlessly complicated. Neumann is a German name. In America, he’d be known as Newman. But this was a writer in the 1600s and he was a bit fancy.
Back in Neumann’s day, it was fashionable to adapt your name to something more classical so Neumann chose the Greek version of his name which was Neander. It’s only with some small degree of irony that Neumann’s name, New Man, was given to a place where a literal new kind of man was found centuries later.
6. Everest was Named After A Man Who Had Never Seen the Mountain
The highest mountain on Earth is Everest, located in the Himalayas on the border of Nepal and Tibet/China. Everest, of course, is neither a Chinese nor Nepali name. The mountain was named after Sir George Everest, British Surveyor General of India.
At first, it seems like Everest was maybe a little arrogant in naming the tallest mountain in the world after himself, but that’s not the case. Everest didn’t name the mountain, his successor Andrew Waugh did.
Everest had never climbed the mountain and, in fact, did not want it named after him at all. Everest was in favor of using local names whenever possible but Waugh claimed, inexplicably, that he could not discover any local name for Everest, as though none of the people of Tibet or Nepal had thought to name the tallest mountain on Earth. The countries were closed to foreigners at the time and he apparently couldn’t find anyone who had visited either and seen the mountain. The Tibetan name, incidentally, was Chomolungma.
Despite his protests, the Royal Geographical Society called it Everest officially. The man himself died the next year.
5. The Amazon Rainforest and River Are Named for the Mythological Female Warriors
You’ll find the word “Amazon” two places in history before the massive company that now dominates the name. One is the river and associated rainforest in South America. The other is the tribe of warrior women from Greek mythology who came from an unknown land but may have not been entirely fictitious. The river was named after the women.
The first European to encounter the Amazon was Francisco de Orellana. In 1541, he claimed to have encountered Fierce opposition as he explored the land from a tribe of female warriors. The Amazon is known to be home to numerous indigenous tribes, as many as 500 even today, so there’s plenty of reason to believe he would have met the locals.
Impressed by the fighting prowess of the warriors he encountered, he named the place after the closest reference he had from his own knowledge basis which was the Amazons for mythology.
4. New Mexico was Named over 200 Years Before Mexico
Few names are more blatantly ironic than that of New Mexico. The existence of New Mexico implies the existence of an old Mexico. And we have a Mexico, immediately south of New Mexico. Case closed! But, oddly, this is not the case at all. New Mexico was named more than two centuries before Mexico. Now that’s a Shyamalan twist.
The name of New Mexico dates back to 1598 when the Spanish claimed it in the name of New Spain. New Spain is what you would know today is Mexico. The country gained independence from Spain in 1821 and in 1824 the name Mexico, or more specifically the United Mexican States, became the official name.
So Mexico was in Mexico until 1824. But New Mexico, or Nuevo Mexico, was named 200 years earlier because both New Mexico and Mexico take their name from the Aztec Valley of the Rio Grande. The Mexica people were the rulers of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish thought New Mexico was home to some fabled Aztec cities.
3. Ducks are Named After the Verb
You have probably seen a duck before, they’re pretty common all over the world. Even if you haven’t seen one in person, there are a number of cartoon ducks out there that may have familiarized you with the species, their speech impediments, or maybe their love of diving into big vats of gold coins.
Besides the waterfowl, we also use the word duck to let someone know they need to watch out for something coming at their head. So how did it come to pass that the word duck applies to both of these things that seem to have nothing in common? It turns out they have more in common than you think.
Duck, the bird, was named after duck, the verb. The name duck comes from an Old English word that means to duck or dive. Because ducks (the birds) duck or dive under the water.
Those of you familiar with waterfowl may know that pretty much every bird on the water will duck or dive beneath the surface but, you know, only one of them could get the name.
2. The Character Mark in The Room was Named After Matt Damon
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is one of the most infamously bad films ever made which makes it rather beloved. There are dozens of stories about how completely baffling the process of making the film was, so much so that there’s even a movie about it. But even that leaves out a ton of small, fun details.
One of the main characters in the movie is named Mark, the best friend of Wiseau’s character Johnny. Wiseau wrote the script, so he named all the characters himself. Mark, for instance, was named after famous actor Matt Damon because of his performance in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
This is the part where you might say “but Matt Damon’s name is Matt, not Mark.” This is true, but Wiseau couldn’t remember his name correctly and thought it was Mark.
1. Dolly The Sheep Was Named After Dolly Parton For A Very Particular Reason
You don’t hear much of the news about cloning these days because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of cloning going on. But when the first clone, a sheep named Dolly, was born in 1996, it was International news. The fact that a clone had been created by science was the big story and people tended to overlook the fact that her name was Dolly. but she wasn’t named that on a whim.
Dolly was named after Dolly Parton because, and we mean this in the nicest way possible, scientists are big nerds sometimes. Dolly was cloned from mammary cells so someone suggested Parton as namesake for… reasons.