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The whole atlas in one list. Filter by how settled the etymology is, or by the kind of link between the word and the place.
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-athonEvery telethon and hackathon is a misreading of a Greek battlefield.Marathon · Greece · IndirectWell attestedAberdeen cutletVictorian slang for a fish dressed up with the name of a piece of meat.Aberdeen · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedAbruzzi wareThe pottery is named for a mountain region that most tourists skip.Abruzzo · Italy · From the placeProbableabukumaliteIt came out of a vertical pipe of pegmatite only sixty meters across that is packed with yttrium minerals.Abukuma River · Japan · From the placeProbableacademyEvery academy is named for a grove outside Athens.Akademeia · Greece · From the placeWell attestedafghanThe blanket is named for a country it was never made in.Afghanistan · Afghanistan · From its peopleWell attestedAlaskan KingAmerican bed sizes use state names as units of bigness.Alaska · United States · From the placeProbableAlberta clipperOne weather term, two borrowings: a Canadian province and a racing sailing ship.Alberta · Canada · From the placeWell attestedalbertosaurThe dinosaur is named for a Canadian province.Alberta · Canada · From the placeWell attestedAleppo soapThe laurel oil, not the olive oil, is what makes it Aleppo soap.Aleppo · Syria · From the placeWell attestedall roads lead to RomeThe Roman road network really did radiate from one gilded marker in the Forum.Rome · Italy · From the placeWell attestedamarilliteThe Atacama is so dry that soluble sulfates survive at the surface there instead of washing away.Tierra Amarilla · Chile · From the placeWell attestedAmerican cheeseIt names a country; in US law it now means processed cheese.United States · United States · From its peopleWell attestedamericanoThe coffee is named for the Americans who wanted it weaker.United States · United States · From its peopleWell attestedamstalliteA mineral named for a hamlet so small that name-matching software routinely gives up and pins the whole country instead.Amstall · Austria · From the placeWell attestedangoraThe wool carries the old name of Ankara.Ankara · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedangosturaThe bitters are named for a river town now called Ciudad Bolívar.Ciudad Bolívar · Venezuela · From its productWell attestedaniliteMachine matching regularly sends this name to the ruined Armenian city of Ani; the real Ani is a copper mine in northern Japan.Ani mine · Japan · From the placeWell attestedAppalachian dulcimerIt is not a dulcimer: real dulcimers are struck, and this one is plucked.Appalachian Mountains · Canada · From the placeWell attestedAran jumperThe "ancient clan patterns" are a 20th-century marketing invention.Aran Islands · Ireland · From the placeWell attestedardealiteThe mineral exists because of tens of thousands of cubic meters of fossil bat droppings.Transylvania · Romania · From the placeWell attestedArizona perfumeArizona became a slang prefix meaning the cheapest possible version of anything.Arizona · United States · From the placeProbableArizona roomA room named for a state, built to dodge the heat that state is famous for.Arizona · United States · From the placeProbableArmageddonThe end of the world is named after a hill in Israel.Tel Megiddo · Israel · Historical nameWell attestedascotThe tie is named for a Berkshire racecourse.Ascot · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedascot tieA necktie named after a Berkshire village with a racecourse and a dress code.Ascot · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedasiagoThe cheese is named for a plateau town in the Veneto.Asiago · Italy · From its productWell attestedastrakhanThe curled fleece is named for a city on the Volga delta.Astrakhan · Russia · From its productWell attestedatticThe room under the roof is named for the region around Athens.Attica · Greece · Historical nameWell attestedAttic saltWit itself is measured in Athenian units.Attica · Greece · From its peopleWell attestedAurignacianA village of a few hundred people in the Pyrenean foothills gave its name to the first modern humans in Europe.Aurignac · France · From the placeWell attestedaustraliteNASA studied the aerodynamic shape of these glass buttons when designing Apollo re-entry capsules.Australia · Australia · From the placeWell attestedavellaneA heraldic cross is named for an Italian hazelnut town.Avella · Italy · From the placeWell attestedBabelesqueBabel is not a mythical city: it is simply the Hebrew name for Babylon, whose ruins are south of Baghdad.Babylon · Iraq · IndirectWell attestedBabylonizeCoined for what Nebuchadnezzar did to the names of his captives.Babylon · Iraq · From the placeWell attestedbaccaratThe game shares its name with a Lorraine glassmaking town, and nobody can prove the connection.Baccarat · France · From the placeDisputedbadmintonThe sport is named for an English country house.Badminton · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBaghdad by the BaySan Francisco's fondest nickname belongs to a city 7,000 miles away.Baghdad · Iraq · From the placeWell attestedbaked AlaskaA hot dessert named for a frozen territory the United States had just bought.Alaska · United States · From the placeProbableBakersfield soundCountry music's sharpest rebuttal to Nashville came from a California oil town.Bakersfield · United States · From the placeWell attestedBakewell puddingThe town's pudding and the supermarket's tart are not the same thing.Bakewell · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBakewell tartThe almond tart is named for a Derbyshire town.Bakewell · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedbalaclavaThe winter hood is named for a Crimean War landing place.Balaklava · Ukraine · From the placeWell attestedbalbrigganThe knitted cotton is named for a town north of Dublin.Balbriggan · Ireland · From its productWell attestedBali bellyAustralia has its own name for the illness the rest of the world calls Delhi belly.Bali · Indonesia · From the placeWell attestedBalkanizationThe word for fragmentation goes back to a Turkish word for a wooded mountain.Balkans · · From the placeWell attestedBalkanizeThe word was coined by outsiders about a peninsula they had just finished carving up.Balkans · · From the placeWell attestedbalm of GileadThe North American balm of Gilead is a poplar bud, not the Levantine resin.Gilead · Jordan · Historical nameProbablebalmoralTwo different garments are named for one royal estate in Aberdeenshire.Balmoral Castle · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBaltimorgueBaltimore and morgue share enough letters that the joke assembles itself.Baltimore · United States · From the placeWell attestedBangaloreThe demolition charge carries the old spelling of Bengaluru.Bengaluru · India · Historical nameWell attestedBankside ladyThe brothels behind the phrase were licensed by a bishop.Bankside · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedbarègeThe gauzy dress fabric is named for a Pyrenean spa.Bareges · France · From its productWell attestedbarnetLondon slang for hair is half of Barnet Fair.Barnet · United States · From the placeWell attestedbarquilliteThe crystals are smaller than a human hair is wide, which is why it took until the 1990s to find them.Barquilla · Spain · From the placeWell attestedBath bunThe bun is named for a spa city.Bath · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedBath chairThe wheelchair's ancestor is named for an English spa town's gouty visitors.Bath · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBattenbergThe checked cake is named for a German village, by way of a royal wedding.Battenberg · Germany · From the placeWell attestedBattenberg cakeThe checkerboard cake is named for a small German town almost nobody visits.Battenberg · Germany · IndirectProbablebayonetThe blade is traditionally tied to a port in the Basque country.Bayonne · France · From its productProbableBeaujolaisThe wine is named for a former lordship, not a town.Beaujolais · France · From its productWell attestedbedlamChaos is a worn-down pronunciation of Bethlehem.Bethlem Hospital · United Kingdom · Historical nameWell attestedBedlington terrierIt is groomed to look like a lamb and was bred to kill things underground.Bedlington · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedbeidelliteThe material from the place the mineral is named after turned out not to be the mineral.Colorado · United States · From the placeWell attestedBeijing bikiniChinese cities have run official campaigns against it.Beijing · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedBelfast sinkBelfast had water to spare; London did not, and their sinks differ by one hole.Belfast · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableBelle de BoskoopA Dutch nursery town's chance seedling became a standard European baking apple.Boskoop · Netherlands · From the placeWell attestedbergamotThe tea's perfume is usually traced to a Lombard city.Bergamo · Italy · From its productProbableberkeliumThe discoverers picked the name as a deliberate echo of an older element named for a Swedish village.Berkeley · United States · From the placeWell attestedberlinThe carriage is named for the city where it was designed.Berlin · Germany · From the placeWell attestedBerlinerThe doughnut is simply a Berliner.Berlin · Germany · From its peopleWell attestedBermuda grassThe grass is named for a stopover, not a home.Bermuda · United Kingdom · Historical nameWell attestedBermuda shortsThe shorts are named for the island where they became formal wear.Bermuda · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBermuda TriangleA stretch of ocean is named for one of its corners.Bermuda · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedbetpakdaliteNamed for a desert the size of a small country, though it came from a single tungsten pit inside it.Betpak-Dala · Kazakhstan · From the placeWell attestedbezantThe coin carries the same old name as the adjective.Istanbul · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedbhut jolokiaThe ghost in ghost pepper may really be Bhutan.Bhutan · Bhutan · DisputedDisputedBibleThe word for the book traces to a Phoenician port that traded papyrus.Byblos · Lebanon · Historical nameWell attestedbicchuliteIt was described simultaneously from a Japanese limestone skarn and a basalt contact in County Antrim.Bitchū · Japan · From the placeWell attestedbikiniThe swimsuit is named for a nuclear test site.Bikini Atoll · Marshall Islands · From the placeWell attestedBilbao effectOne museum turned a declining industrial port into a case study that planners have chased ever since.Bilbao · Spain · From the placeWell attestedbilboThe Elizabethan sword is named for a Basque port.Bilbao · Spain · Historical nameWell attestedBirmanThe cat is named for a country it probably never came from.Myanmar · Myanmar · IndirectWell attestedBisbee blueThe most prized American turquoise was a nuisance byproduct of copper mining.Bisbee · United States · From its productWell attestedbistouryThe surgical blade may be named for a Tuscan city, like the pistol.Pistoia · Italy · From its productDisputedBlack Forest cakeThe cake is named for a German upland, through its cherry spirit.Black Forest · Germany · From its productWell attestedBlack Forest gâteauIt is named for a cherry spirit, not for a forest full of cakes.Black Forest · Germany · From its productProbableblarneySmooth talk is named for a village in County Cork.Blarney · Ireland · From the placeWell attestedBlighty woundThe most desirable thing on the Western Front was a bullet in the right place.United Kingdom · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedBloomsberriesA London district that was cheap and unfashionable gave its name to a byword for highbrow.Bloomsbury · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedbluepointThe oyster is named for a hamlet on Long Island.Blue Point · United States · From the placeWell attestedBoeotianAn insult preserved from one Greek region's rivalry with another.Boeotia · Greece · From its peopleWell attestedbohemianThe word rests on a mistake about where Romani people came from.Bohemia · Czech Republic · IndirectWell attestedBolivian marching powderA novel about New York nightlife in 1984 put this phrase into general English.Bolivia · Bolivia · From the placeWell attestedbolognaThe lunch meat is named for an Italian city.Bologna · Italy · From its productWell attestedbologneseThe meat sauce is the adjective for Bolognese.Bologna · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedBolognese sauceBologna serves its ragu with flat egg pasta; the spaghetti version is a foreign habit.Bologna · Italy · From the placeWell attestedBombay duckBombay duck is a fish, dried and pungent, with no bird in it at all.Mumbai · India · Historical nameWell attestedBombay sandwichBombay became Mumbai in 1995; the sandwich kept the old name anyway.Mumbai · India · Historical nameWell attestedBorodino breadA dark rye named after the bloodiest single day of Napoleon's Russian campaign.Borodino · Russia · From the placeProbableBorodinsky breadThe bread is named for the bloodiest single day of the Napoleonic wars.Borodino · Russia · From the placeProbableBosoxThe word exists because two American cities fielded a team called the Sox and headline writers had to tell them apart.Boston · United States · IndirectWell attestedBoston BrahminA New England aristocracy named after an Indian priestly caste by a Boston doctor.Boston · United States · From the placeWell attestedBoston cream pieA cake called a pie is named for a city.Boston · United States · From its productWell attestedBoston marriageThe phrase describes a common Victorian arrangement that left almost no written record of its own name.Boston · United States · From the placeProbablebotafogoThe dance step is named for a district of Rio de Janeiro.Botafogo · Brazil · From the placeWell attestedbougieThe medical instrument is named for an Algerian port that exported wax.Bejaia · Algeria · From its productWell attestedbourbonThe whiskey is named for a Kentucky county, itself named for a French dynasty.Bourbon County · United States · From its productProbableBovey coalA Devon town named a coal too young and too smoky to be much good.Bovey Tracey · United Kingdom · From its productProbableBraeburnThe apple is named for a New Zealand orchard.Waiwhero · New Zealand · From the placeWell attestedbrazil nutThe nut is named for the country it was shipped from.Brazil · Brazil · From its productWell attestedBrazil plumThe tree keeps its own water tank underground.Brazil · Brazil · From the placeWell attestedBretton WoodsThe world's monetary order is named for a resort hotel in the New Hampshire woods.Bretton Woods · United States · From the placeWell attestedBrexitThe word was modeled on Grexit, coined three months earlier for a departure that never happened.United Kingdom · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedbring owls to AthensAthens' own silver coins were stamped with the owl nobody needed more of.Athens · Greece · From the placeWell attestedBristol soundJournalists coined trip hop for it; the musicians preferred the city's name.Bristol · United Kingdom · From the placeProbablebromliteThe same mineral got two place names four years apart, and both are still in use.Alston Moor · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBronx cheerA rude noise is named for a New York borough.The Bronx · United States · From the placeWell attestedBrooklyn blackout cakeNamed for wartime blackouts ordered to hide the Brooklyn Navy Yard.Brooklyn · United States · From the placeProbableBrooklyn fadeOne haircut, several city names, depending on which barber you ask.Brooklyn · United States · From the placeProbableBrooklyneseThe accent got a borough's name because that is where the movies said their tough guys came from.Brooklyn · United States · From the placeWell attestedbrummagemThe word for shoddy goods is a local pronunciation of Birmingham.Birmingham · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedBrummajemThe city's own pronunciation of its name became an English word for cheap fakes.Birmingham · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedBrussels sproutThe vegetable is named for a city that cultivated it.Brussels · Belgium · From its productWell attestedBuckieThe drink most associated with Scottish street drinking is made by Benedictine monks in Devon.Buckfast Abbey · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedbuffalo wingThe wings are named for a city, not an animal.Buffalo · United States · From its productWell attestedbugiaThe candlestick shares its origin with the surgical bougie.Bejaia · Algeria · From its productWell attestedbungalowThe house type is named for Bengal.Bengal · India · From its peopleWell attestedbunkumNonsense is named after a North Carolina county.Buncombe County · United States · From the placeWell attestedburgundyThe colour is a French wine region.Burgundy · France · From its productWell attestedburpaliteAn obscure alkaline intrusion in the mountains north of Lake Baikal has produced a long list of minerals found nowhere else.Severo-Baykalsky District · Russia · From the placeWell attestedByzantineThe word for bureaucratic tangle is an old name for Istanbul.Istanbul · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedcafé liégeoisA Viennese dessert renamed for the Belgian city that slowed the German advance.Liège · Belgium · From the placeProbablecalicoThe print cloth is named for Kozhikode, once called Calicut.Kozhikode · India · From its productWell attestedCalifornia CurrentThe Pacific's cold counterpart is named for the coast it follows.California · United States · From the placeWell attestedCalifornia kingA California king is narrower than an ordinary king, not bigger.California · United States · From the placeProbableCalifornia rollA roll named for California may well have been invented in Canada.California · United States · From the placeProbablecaliforniumA magazine editorial mocked the name within months, and the discoverers had a ready answer.California · United States · From the placeWell attestedCalydonian BoarThe whole disaster started with a farmer forgetting one goddess at harvest time.Calydon · Greece · From the placeWell attestedCalydonian HuntIt was the standard roll call of Greek heroes long before anyone wrote the myth down in full.Calydon · Greece · From the placeWell attestedCamden benchIt is designed to defeat sleeping, skateboarding, drug dealing and graffiti at the same time.London Borough of Camden · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedcamembertThe cheese is a Norman village.Camembert · France · From its productWell attestedcamisa de chinoThe national dress of the Philippines is worn over a shirt named for Chinese laborers.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · IndirectProbableCanada gooseIt is the Canada goose, never the Canadian goose, and many never see Canada.Canada · Canada · From the placeWell attestedCanadian baconIn Canada it is just back bacon; the country in the name is an American addition.Canada · Canada · From its peopleWell attestedcanaryThe bird is named for the islands. The islands are named for dogs.Canary Islands · Spain · From the placeWell attestedcanolaA country's name is hiding inside a supermarket cooking oil.Canada · Canada · IndirectWell attestedcantaloupeThe melon is named for a papal estate in the Sabine hills.Cantalupo in Sabina · Italy · From its productProbableCanton flannelCanton is Guangzhou; the cloth was named for the port, not a mill there.Guangzhou · People's Republic of China · Historical nameProbableCape CodderNamed for the cranberry bogs, not the beaches.Cape Cod · United States · From its peopleProbableCaprese saladCaprese simply means from Capri; the island named a dish the mainland now owns.Capri · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedcapriThe trousers are named for an Italian island.Capri · Italy · From the placeWell attestedcapri pantsNamed for an Italian holiday island by a designer who was not Italian.Capri · Italy · From the placeProbablecaprisThe trousers are named for the island where their designer's family took holidays.Capri · Italy · IndirectWell attestedcaracoliteIt is named after the nearest town rather than the mine, which is why the mine's own name never entered mineralogy.Caracoles, Antofagasta · Chile · From the placeWell attestedcaroliniumAn element that existed for four years, named after a university that took its name from a state.North Carolina · United States · IndirectWell attestedCarrara marbleMichelangelo climbed the mountain to pick his own blocks from the quarry.Carrara · Italy · From its productWell attestedcarrolliteA Maryland county gave its name to the mineral that now comes almost entirely from the Congolese copperbelt.Carroll County · United States · From the placeWell attestedcarry coals to NewcastleThe Tyne shipped coal south for centuries; nobody needed anyone to bring some.Newcastle upon Tyne · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedcasabaThe melon is named for a town in western Turkey.Turgutlu · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedcashmereThe wool is Kashmir, spelled the old English way.Kashmir · People's Republic of China · From its productWell attestedCastile soapThe olive oil soap is named for a Spanish kingdom.Castile · Spain · From its productWell attestedcastles in SpainMedieval French daydreamers put their imaginary castles in Moorish Spain.Spain · Spain · From the placeProbablecayenneThe heat is named for a capital on the Atlantic coast of South America.Cayenne · France · From its productWell attestedcebolliteIt is named for the creek whose drainage the first samples came from, not for a mine or a town.Cebolla Creek · United States · From the placeWell attestedceyssatiteThe name for a French village became a general term for the diatom earths of four neighboring departments.Ceyssat · France · From the placeProbablechambrayThe cloth is named for a city in northern France.Cambrai · France · From its productWell attestedChampNamed by exactly the trick that produced Nessie: clip the water's name, add a pet ending.Lake Champlain · United States · From the placeWell attestedchampagneThe drink is a place-name first, a party word second.Champagne · France · From its productWell attestedChardonnayThe grape is named for a village in Burgundy.Chardonnay · France · From the placeWell attestedcharlatanThe fraud may be named for an Umbrian village of licence-sellers.Cerreto di Spoleto · Italy · DisputedDisputedCharlestonThe dance is named for a South Carolina port.Charleston · United States · From the placeWell attestedchartreuseThe colour is named after a monastery in the Alps.Grande Chartreuse · France · From its productWell attestedChatham Islands penguinThe bird was named almost four centuries after the last one died.Chatham Islands · New Zealand · From the placeWell attestedchatkaliteIt hides as rounded specks inside grains of another mineral, so it can only be found under a microscope.Chatkal Range · Kyrgyzstan · From the placeWell attestedchautauquaA whole movement in adult education is named for a lake in New York.Chautauqua Lake · United States · From the placeWell attestedcheddarThe cheese is named for a gorge village, not a brand.Cheddar · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedCheddar cheeseThe most copied cheese name in the world belongs to one small Somerset village.Cheddar · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedChegetRussia's nuclear command kit is named after a ski mountain in the Caucasus.Cheget · Russia · From the placeWell attestedChelsea bunThe bun is named for a London district's bakery.Chelsea · United States · From its productWell attestedChelsea grinLondon's name for an injury that Glasgow is usually blamed for.Chelsea · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableChelsea smileThe same wound is named for Glasgow in Scotland and for Chelsea in London.Chelsea · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableChernobyl syndromeThe plant was not in Chernobyl, and the people who worked there did not live there either.Chernobyl · Ukraine · From the placeProbablechernobyliteA substance named after a place that was made by an accident at that place, in a single night in April 1986.Chernobyl · Ukraine · From the placeWell attestedcherry Bakewell tartBakewell's own specialty is a different pudding; the iced tart is an upstart.Bakewell · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableCheshire catThe grin was proverbial in England decades before Lewis Carroll borrowed it.Cheshire · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedChiantiThe wine names the hills it grows on.Chianti · Italy · From its productWell attestedChicago BoyA 1950s student exchange put Chicago economics into a Chilean junta's cabinet.Chicago · United States · IndirectWell attestedChicago overcoatRaymond Chandler put it in print in 1939, and it has been gangster shorthand ever since.Chicago · United States · From the placeWell attestedChicago typewriterThe army would not buy it, so the name came from the people who did.Chicago · United States · From the placeWell attestedchicken MarengoNapoleon's cook almost certainly did not improvise it on the battlefield.Spinetta Marengo · Italy · From the placeProbableChihuahuaThe smallest dog is named for the largest Mexican state.Chihuahua · Mexico · From the placeWell attestedChile saltpeterA desert where it almost never rains once held the world's nitrate supply.Chile · Chile · From its productWell attestedChile saltpetreA fertilizer redrew the map of South America and then vanished from the economy.Chile · Chile · From the placeWell attestedchinaThe teacup is named for the country that made porcelain famous in Europe.Jingdezhen · People's Republic of China · From its productWell attestedChina syndromeAn engineers' joke about digging to China became the name of a real fear twelve days before Three Mile Island.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedChinadomBefore Chinatown settled into English, American writers tried Chinadom.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedChinatownThe word was coined in California before it was ever used of London or Sydney.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedChinese dragonIt is a rain spirit with a hare's eyes, not a fire-breathing lizard.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedChinese pieThe China in this pie may be South China, Maine.South China · United States · DisputedDisputedChisoxA nickname built on a nickname: the White Sox were already a headline writer's abbreviation.Chicago · United States · IndirectWell attestedChoclo virusThe virus is named after a bar, which is named after a corncob.Las Tablas · Panama · From the placeProbableChorleywood processMost British supermarket bread comes from a method named after a commuter village.Chorleywood · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedciliceThe hair shirt is named for a region of southern Anatolia.Cilicia · Turkey · From its productWell attestedCincinnati chiliChili made by Macedonian immigrants, spiced like a Balkan stew, served on pasta.Cincinnati · United States · From the placeWell attestedclose one's eyes and think of EnglandThe journal everyone quotes for this phrase has never been produced.England · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedcoachThe carriage is named for a village in Hungary.Kocs · Hungary · From its productWell attestedcognacThe brandy is the town’s name in a glass.Cognac · France · From its productWell attestedColby cheeseA young Wisconsin cheesemaker invented it in 1885 and named it after his township.Colby · United States · From the placeWell attestedcologneThe fragrance is named for Cologne, in German Köln.Cologne · Germany · From its productWell attestedColombian marching powderThe country that processed and shipped it got its own version of the phrase.Colombia · Colombia · From the placeWell attestedColombian necktieIt was a message left on a body, not a method of murder.Colombia · Colombia · From the placeWell attestedcolophoniteThe name reaches a mineral through pine resin, and reaches pine resin through an Ionian city.Colophon · Turkey · IndirectProbablecolophonyViolinists' rosin is named for an Ionian city.Colophon · Turkey · From its productWell attestedConcord grapeAmerica's juice-and-jelly grape was bred in one backyard in Massachusetts.Concord · United States · From the placeWell attestedCondrieuThe wine is named for a small Rhone commune.Condrieu · France · From its productWell attestedConey Island hot dogA Michigan diner staple is named for a New York beach.Coney Island · United States · From the placeWell attestedcongaThe dance and the drum both point to the Congo.Democratic Republic of the Congo · Democratic Republic of the Congo · From its peopleWell attestedcongoliteIt was picked out of the crushed residue of a drill core through buried salt beds.Republic of the Congo · Republic of the Congo · From the placeWell attestedCopenhagen plankA groin exercise carries a Danish city's name and nobody agrees why.Copenhagen · Denmark · From the placeDisputedcopperThe metal’s name is the ancient name of Cyprus.Cyprus · Cyprus · From its productWell attestedCorinthian helmetThe classic Greek helmet is named for one city.Corinth · Greece · From the placeWell attestedcornwalliteCornwall is one of the few places on earth that has lent its name to a mineral twice, in two languages.Q23148 · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedcosOne lettuce is named for a Greek island and the other for Rome.Kos · Greece · From the placeWell attestedcos lettuceOne lettuce, named for a Greek island in Britain and for Rome in America.Kos · Greece · From the placeProbablecosaliteIts exact composition resisted settlement for over a century because lead and bismuth are almost indistinguishable to X-rays.Cosalá · Mexico · From the placeWell attestedCovent Garden abbessLondon's sex trade had its own printed annual directory for nearly forty years.Covent Garden · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedCovent Garden agueGeorgian London named a venereal disease after a single square.Covent Garden · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableCovent Garden nunThe joke of calling a prostitute a nun is older than the phrase by centuries.Covent Garden · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedcream HavartiThe cheese is named after a farm outside Copenhagen where a woman reverse-engineered European cheesemaking.Holte · Denmark · IndirectWell attestedcretonneThe furnishing cotton is usually traced to a Norman village.Creton · Italy · From its productProbableCro-MagnonEurope's first modern humans are named for a rock shelter behind a village hotel.Les Eyzies · France · From the placeWell attestedCuban heelThe boot heel is named for an island.Cuba · Cuba · From its peopleWell attestedCuban sandwichThe Cuban sandwich was worked out in Florida, not in Cuba.Cuba · Cuba · From its peopleWell attestedCupertinoThe autocorrect blunder is named for a Californian city.Cupertino · United States · From the placeWell attestedCupertino effectOfficial EU and NATO documents were published referring to Cupertino between nations.Cupertino · United States · From the placeWell attestedcuraçaoThe liqueur is named for the island whose oranges flavour it.Curaçao · Curacao · From its productWell attestedcurrantThe baking fruit is a worn-down word for Corinth.Corinth · Greece · From its productWell attestedCyprianAn island's name was once a euphemism.Cyprus · Cyprus · From its peopleWell attesteddacquoiseThe meringue cake is the feminine of from Dax.Dax · France · From its peopleWell attesteddaiquiriThe cocktail is named for a Cuban mining beach.Daiquirí · Cuba · From the placeWell attestedDalmatianThe spotted dog is named for a stretch of the Adriatic coast.Dalmatia · Croatia · From the placeWell attestedDamascene conversionOne blinding flash on a Syrian trade road now describes any change of heart.Damascus · Syria · From its peopleWell attestedDamascus steelThe watered steel carries the city that traded it.Damascus · Syria · From its productWell attesteddamaskThe cloth and the steel both remember Damascus.Damascus · Syria · From its productWell attesteddamkjerniteThe rock keeps a dialect spelling of a Norwegian lake name that the maps stopped using.Damtjern · Norway · From the placeWell attesteddamsonThe plum is a damascene fruit in miniature.Damascus · Syria · From its productWell attesteddamtjerniteTwo spellings of one rock name survive in petrology because a Norwegian lake was respelled after 1921.Damtjern · Norway · From the placeWell attesteddanishThe pastry is named for the wrong country.Denmark · Denmark · From its peopleWell attesteddarmstadtiumA city of about 160,000 people in Hesse has its name stamped permanently on the periodic table.Darmstadt · Germany · From the placeWell attestedDavos ManA magazine coined it as praise; a Harvard political scientist turned it into an accusation.Davos · Switzerland · From the placeWell attestedDearbornistanThe suffix does all the work: change the ending and a Detroit suburb is reclassified as foreign territory.Dearborn · United States · From the placeWell attesteddelftThe blue and white pottery is named for a Dutch city.Delft · Netherlands · From its productWell attestedDelhi bellyThe city was chosen for the rhyme, not for the bacteria.Delhi · India · From the placeWell attesteddenimThe cloth is named for Nîmes, not for jeans.Nîmes · France · From its productWell attestedDenver bootDenver clamped cars instead of towing them, and the city kept the credit.Denver · United States · From the placeWell attestedderbyThe hat and the local rivalry both come from an earl's racehorse prize.Derby · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedDevonianThe period was named in the middle of a long and public argument between geologists.Devon · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedDiabloerThe Lord of Terror is named after a California peak with a paved road to the summit.Mount Diablo · United States · IndirectWell attestedDijon mustardThe mustard is named for a Burgundian city.Dijon · France · From its productWell attesteddiscuss UgandaA magazine turned one guest's excuse at one party into fifty years of euphemism.Uganda · Uganda · From the placeWell attestedDogo ArgentinoBred out of a fighting dog that no longer exists.Argentina · Argentina · From its peopleWell attesteddollarThe word traces to a silver mine in the Ore Mountains.Jáchymov · Czech Republic · From its productWell attesteddonnybrookA free-for-all is named after a Dublin suburb's fair.Donnybrook · Ireland · From the placeWell attesteddoolallyThe word for losing it comes from a transit camp in Maharashtra.Deolali · India · From the placeWell attesteddoolally tapSoldiers lost their minds waiting for a troopship at a camp called Deolali.Deolali · India · From the placeWell attestedDover soleThe fish is named for the port that landed it freshest.Dover · United States · From its productWell attesteddrap de BerryA retired English word for cloth, borrowed whole from a French province.Berry · United States · From its productProbableDubai chocolateA pregnancy craving in Dubai went on to strain the world pistachio supply.Dubai · United Arab Emirates · From the placeWell attesteddubboAn entire regional city standing in for the phrase country bumpkin.Dubbo · Australia · From the placeWell attesteddubniumThis element carried two rival names for nearly thirty years before a committee settled the argument.Dubna · Russia · From the placeWell attestedduffelThe bag is named for a Flemish town.Duffel · Belgium · From its productWell attestedduffel bagThe bag is named for a Flemish town that sold the cloth, not the bag.Duffel · Belgium · From its productWell attestedduffel coatNamed for a Belgian town that made the cloth, not the coat.Duffel · Belgium · From its productWell attestedDuluth modelA program from one Minnesota city became the default sentence in American courts.Duluth · United States · From the placeWell attesteddumdumThe bullet is named for an arsenal near Kolkata.Dum Dum · India · From the placeWell attesteddungareesThe work clothes are usually traced to a district of Mumbai.Dongri · India · From its productProbableDunkirk spiritBritain's favorite morale phrase commemorates a retreat, not a victory.Dunkirk · France · From the placeWell attestedDutch doorEnglish has a whole set of phrases that use Dutch as a slight.Netherlands · Kingdom of the Netherlands · From its peopleWell attestedDutch rubIt joins Dutch courage and Dutch uncle in English's long grudge against the Dutch.Netherlands · Kingdom of the Netherlands · From its peopleDisputedDutch ShepherdThe brindle coat exists to stop anyone confusing it with the German shepherd.Netherlands · Netherlands · From the placeWell attestedEccles cakeThe currant pastry is named for a Lancashire town.Eccles · France · From its productWell attestedEgerianThe Hungarian town famous for a wine called bull's blood also names a slice of geologic time.Eger · Hungary · From the placeWell attestedEggenburgianA vanished sea left central Europe with its own calendar of geologic time, named after small Austrian and Hungarian towns.Eggenburg · Austria · From the placeWell attestedEgyptian MauMau just means cat; the breed is a 1950s project built on Egyptian imports.Egypt · Egypt · From its peopleProbableehliteWiktionary places this one near Linz in Austria; the village is actually on the Rhine in Germany, several hundred kilometers away.Linz am Rhein · Germany · From the placeWell attestedeifeliteIt was the first mineral of its group found with sodium in the octahedral site that magnesium or iron normally holds.Eifel · Germany · From the placeWell attestedEleusinian MysteriesAntiquity's most famous secret is named for a town near Athens.Eleusis · Greece · From the placeWell attestedelpasoliteA mineral almost nobody collects gave its name to a whole family of synthetic crystals used to catch neutrons.El Paso County · United States · From the placeWell attestedEnglish breakfastOne phrase names both the fry-up and the tea you drink with it.England · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedEnglish CarrierThe pigeon called Carrier is the one that no longer carries anything.England · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedEnglish cocker spanielIn England it is just a cocker spaniel; Americans added the country.England · United Kingdom · From its peopleProbableEnglish hornNeither English nor a horn.England · United Kingdom · DisputedDisputedEnglish muffinThe muffin is only English outside England.England · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedEnglish saddleThe name exists only because Americans needed a word for the saddle that was not theirs.England · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedEnglish setter"Setter" is no temperament: the dog sat so a net could be thrown over the birds.England · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedEnglish ShepherdThe English Shepherd is an American breed named for its ancestors' homeland.England · United Kingdom · From its peopleProbableEnglish sparrowNative across Eurasia; Americans named it for the country that shipped it.England · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedEnglish-cutTwo butchers can hand you the same rib in shapes that have nothing in common.England · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableEpsom saltsThe bath salts are named for an English spa town.Epsom · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestederbiumOne small feldspar quarry outside Stockholm supplied the names of four separate chemical elements.Ytterby mine · Sweden · IndirectWell attestedEssex girlEssex campaigners asked the Oxford English Dictionary to delete this phrase, and were refused.Essex · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedEssex manA newspaper column invented an entire social class in a single article.Essex · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedetnaThe spirit burner is named for a Sicilian volcano.Mount Etna · Italy · From the placeWell attestedEverest syndromeAn academic vice named after a mountaineer's shortest recorded answer.Mount Everest · Nepal · IndirectProbablefaienceThe glazed ware is named for an Italian town, by way of French.Faenza · Italy · From its productWell attestedfayaliteThe mineral is named for an Azorean island where it probably never occurred naturally.Faial Island · Portugal · From the placeWell attestedfelbertaliteThe mineral comes from the largest tungsten mine in western Europe, but it contains no tungsten at all.Felber valley · Austria · From the placeWell attestedFerro meridianFor three centuries longitude was counted from the edge of the known world.El Hierro · Spain · IndirectWell attestedfezThe cap is named for a Moroccan city.Fez · Morocco · From its productWell attestedfianeliteA single small Alpine manganese mine produced a vanadate found nowhere else.Val Ferrera · Switzerland · From the placeWell attestedfichteliteA mineral as soft as talc and barely denser than water, sitting inside buried pine logs.Fichtel Mountains · Germany · From the placeWell attestedfiddle while Rome burnsThe fiddle would not be invented for another fourteen centuries.Rome · Italy · From the placeWell attestedFilthadelphiaThe city named for brotherly love picked up a second name from its garbage.Philadelphia · United States · From the placeWell attestedFinlandizationWest German commentators coined a word out of Finland's name that Finns have resented ever since.Finland · Finland · From the placeWell attestedFinlandizeOne of the few country names that English turned into a transitive verb for something done to a country.Finland · Finland · From the placeWell attestedFlorida pantherIt is not a panther, and no black one has ever been confirmed.Florida · United States · From the placeWell attestedFlorida roomThe room that sells a Florida lifestyle is mostly a defense against mosquitoes.Florida · United States · From the placeProbablefrancevilliteThe basin it comes from ran natural nuclear fission reactors two billion years ago.Franceville · Gabon · From the placeWell attestedfranciumIts discoverer first wanted to call it catium, and was told it would sound like cat in English.France · France · From the placeWell attestedFrankfurt SchoolThe Frankfurt School wrote its most famous books in American exile.Frankfurt · Germany · From the placeWell attestedfrankfurterThe hot dog’s older name is a city adjective.Frankfurt · Germany · From its productWell attestedFrankfurtianA word that looks like a demonym in practice means about a dozen exiled theorists.Frankfurt · Germany · IndirectWell attestedfranklinphiliteThe second half of the name is Greek for loving: mineralogists cannot leave this one New Jersey orebody alone.Franklin · United States · From the placeWell attestedFrascatiThe Roman table wine is named for a hill town.Frascati · Italy · From its productWell attestedFrench breadFor most of its life in English the phrase had nothing to do with the baguette.France · France · From the placeWell attestedFrench doorAmericans call it a door and the British call the same thing a window.France · France · From the placeWell attestedFrench hornThe orchestra's horn is French only in English.France · France · From its peopleWell attestedFrench leaveThe French say the same thing about the English: filer à l'anglaise.France · France · From its peopleWell attestedFrench polishA French finish made from a resin secreted by an insect farmed in India.France · France · From its peopleProbableFrench ticklerEnglish pins anything sexual on France; French does the same to England.France · France · From its peopleProbableFrench windowA whole family of English words for fittings points at France.France · France · From its peopleWell attestedFrogmore stewNamed for a South Carolina community you will struggle to find on a map.Frogmore · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableFulham virginFulham was English slang for cheating long before it was slang for vice.Fulham · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedgalangalThe word crossed four languages before reaching English, and the place at the end of the chain may not be there at all.Guangdong · People's Republic of China · IndirectDisputedgalliumIts discoverer had to publish a denial that he had secretly named the element after himself.Gaul · France · IndirectWell attestedgasconadeBragging is named for a region of south-west France.Gascony · France · From its peopleWell attestedgénoiseThe sponge is the French feminine for Genoese.Genoa · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedGeorgia overdriveAn imaginary extra gear, named the way American slang usually names bad ideas.Georgia · United States · From the placeProbableGerman measlesThe disease is named for the physicians who described it.Germany · Germany · From its peopleWell attestedGerman shepherdBritain called it the Alsatian for nearly sixty years to avoid the word German.Germany · Germany · From its peopleWell attestedget out of DodgeThe phrase is younger than the television show, not the cattle town.Dodge City · United States · From the placeWell attestedgetchelliteA blood red sulfide from the Nevada gold mine that gave its name to a whole style of ore deposit.Getchell mine · United States · From the placeWell attestedgeyserEvery geyser on Earth is named after one hot spring in Iceland.Haukadalur · Iceland · From the placeWell attestedgilaliteGreen needles of it grow inside quartz crystals and are sold as medusa quartz.Gila County · United States · From the placeWell attestedginghamTwo countries claim this fabric's name, and the earliest cloth backs the one without the town.Guingamp · France · IndirectDisputedGlasgow kissA city's reputation for violence turned into a euphemism for the act itself.Glasgow · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedGlasgow magistrateTwo different stories explain this fish, and both involve a Glasgow official.Glasgow · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedGlasgow saladA joke about Scotland's diet, told in the form of a menu item.Glasgow · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableGlasgow smileThe wound is named for the city whose gang reputation was built by a single novel.Glasgow · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedgnome of ZürichA British cabinet minister coined it in one bad night of a sterling crisis.Zurich · Switzerland · From the placeWell attestedgo to CanossaA castle in Emilia where an emperor waited in the snow for three days.Canossa · Italy · From the placeWell attestedgo to HalifaxA polite way to say hell that points at a real town instead.Halifax · Canada · From the placeDisputedgoodnight ViennaBritish slang for total defeat, lifted from a cheerful 1932 musical about Vienna.Vienna · Austria · From the placeProbableGordian knotThe knot was tied in a Phrygian capital.Gordion · Turkey · From the placeWell attestedgorgonzolaThe blue cheese is a town on the edge of Milan.Gorgonzola · Italy · From its productWell attestedgoudaThe cheese is named for the market that sold it.Gouda · Netherlands · From its productWell attestedGravettianA prehistoric culture is named for a French rock shelter.La Gravette · France · From the placeWell attestedGreek saladIn Greece nobody calls it Greek.Greece · Greece · From the placeWell attestedGreek yogurtStrained yogurt is named for one country among many that make it.Greece · Greece · From its peopleWell attestedgrenacheThe grape and its name may come from opposite ends of the Mediterranean.Vernazza · Italy · IndirectDisputedgrimseliteIt was found inside a hydroelectric cable tunnel bored through the Bernese Alps.Grimsel Pass · Switzerland · From the placeWell attestedGruyèreThe cheese is named for a small town in Fribourg.Gruyères · Switzerland · From its productWell attestedguelder roseNot a rose, and the "Guelders" in the name is a vanished Dutch duchy.Gelderland · Netherlands · Historical nameProbableguernseyThe neighbouring island got its own sweater.Guernsey · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedguineaThe coin is named for the Guinea coast.Elmina · Ghana · Historical nameWell attestedguinea fowlNamed for one stretch of African coast, and native to most of a continent.Guinea · Guinea · From the placeWell attestedguinea pigAn Andean rodent named for West Africa and sold to Europeans as a pig.Guinea · Guinea · DisputedDisputedGulf StreamThe current that warms Europe is named for where it starts.Gulf of Mexico · United States · From the placeWell attestedGypsyThe name preserves a five-hundred-year-old mistake about where Romani people came from.Egypt · Egypt · From the placeWell attestedhabaneraThe dance is the feminine of Havanan.Havana · Cuba · From its peopleWell attestedhabaneroThe chilli is named for Havana, though it is not from there.Havana · Cuba · From its peopleWell attestedhackneyThe hired cab, and the verb hack, point to a London parish.Hackney · United States · From the placeProbablehackney writerThe hack in hack writer started out as a horse from a London parish.Hackney · United States · DisputedDisputedHamburg parsleyThe parsley you eat from the bottom, named for the port that shipped the seed.Hamburg · Germany · From the placeProbablehamburgerThe sandwich is American. The name still points to Hamburg.Hamburg · Germany · From its productProbablehantavirusThe virus family is named for a Korean river.Hantan River · South Korea · From the placeWell attestedHarlem RenaissanceThe most American of movements is named for a town in the Netherlands.Harlem · United States · From the placeWell attestedHarlem sunsetRaymond Chandler seems to have made this one up himself.Q189074 · United States · From the placeProbableHavanaThe cigar is simply the city.Havana · Cuba · From its productWell attestedHavana syndromeThe name stuck to the illness even after cases turned up on four continents.Havana · Cuba · From the placeWell attestedHavartiThe cheese is named for a farm, seventy years after the woman who developed it worked there.Holte · Denmark · From its productWell attestedhave more chins than a Chinese phone bookThe joke only works for a reader who knows Chin is a common Chinese surname.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · From its peopleWell attestedhave more chins than ChinatownMost English speakers met this phrase through a hit parody single.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · IndirectWell attestedHawaiian shirtThe loud shirt is named for the islands that made it.Hawaii · United States · From the placeWell attestedHawthorne effectNone of the researchers who ran the original studies ever used the phrase.Hawthorne Works · United States · From the placeWell attestedHaymarket wareThe street was London's best known market for sex, and the slang treated the women as stock.Haymarket · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedhell and half of GeorgiaAn American measure of distance that takes in most of the afterlife.Georgia · Georgia · From the placeProbablehelvetaneA chemist drew two molecules shaped like national flags and named them after the countries.Switzerland · Switzerland · From the placeWell attestedhenleyThe shirt is named for a rowing regatta.Henley-on-Thames · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedHighland gamesThe caber toss is scored on accuracy, not on distance.Scottish Highlands · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedhockThe English name for Rhine wine is a clipped German town.Hochheim am Main · Germany · Historical nameWell attestedhockamoreEnglish chewed a German town down to one syllable and got hock.Hochheim am Main · Germany · From its productWell attestedhollandaise sauceA thoroughly French sauce called Dutch, for reasons nobody has ever pinned down.Netherlands · Kingdom of the Netherlands · From its peopleDisputedHollywood bedA bed named for glamour that mostly means "we left the footboard off."Hollywood · United States · From the placeProbableHollywood uglyGlasses and a ponytail are all it takes to be ugly in Hollywood.Hollywood · United States · From the placeProbableholmiumSweden's capital is on the periodic table under its Latin name, which nobody uses for the city any more.Stockholm · Sweden · IndirectWell attestedholy ToledoTwo cities claim it: a Spanish cathedral seat and an Ohio river port.Toledo · Spain · DisputedDisputedhomburgThe hat is named for a German spa town.Bad Homburg vor der Höhe · Germany · From its productWell attestedHongcouverTwo Pacific port cities, one name, and an argument about who counts as a local.Vancouver · Canada · From the placeWell attestedhoochBootleg liquor is named for a Tlingit community in Alaska.Angoon · United States · From the placeWell attestedHoxton finA London district became shorthand for a haircut, and then for a whole social type.Hoxton · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedHungarian notationNamed for a programmer's birthplace, because the prefixed names looked foreign.Hungary · Hungary · IndirectWell attestedIcelandic SheepdogThe breed nearly died out at home and was rescued partly by an Englishman.Iceland · Iceland · From the placeProbableIdaho stopOne state legalized rolling stops for bikes in 1982; the rest ignored it for decades.Idaho · United States · From the placeWell attestedikunoliteNamed for a silver mine that had already been working for four centuries when the mineral was found in it.Ikuno Mine · Japan · From the placeWell attestedin more shit than a Werribee duckMelbourne's sewage has gone to Werribee since 1897, and so have the birds.Werribee · Australia · From the placeWell attestedIndia inkThe ink is named for a trade route, not its origin.India · India · Historical nameWell attestedIndia paperIndia paper came from China and Japan; India was only the shipping route.India · India · From its productProbableindialiteIt was born in a coal seam that caught fire underground and baked the rock around it.India · India · From the placeWell attestedindigoThe dye is named for the country it was shipped from.India · India · Historical nameWell attestedIrish setterThe solid red coat is a Victorian fashion; the original dog was red and white.Ireland · Ireland · From its peopleWell attestedIrish wolfhoundThe breed outlived its job: the last wolf in Ireland was killed around 1786.Ireland · Ireland · From its peopleWell attestedisraelaneA molecule named for a flag: the carbon skeleton draws a Star of David.Israel · Israel · From the placeWell attestedIstanbuliteThe demonym is younger than the city by roughly sixteen centuries, because the official name only changed in 1930.Istanbul · Turkey · From the placeWell attesteditabiriteBrazil exports hundreds of millions of tons of this rock a year under a Tupi name meaning shining stone.Itabira · Brazil · From the placeProbableItalian sandwichIn Maine, ordering "an Italian" gets you a sandwich, not a person.Italy · Italy · From its peopleProbableitalicSlanted type is named for Italy, and more tightly for Venice.Venice · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedJaffa cakeNamed for an orange shipped from a port now swallowed by Tel Aviv.Jaffa · Israel · From its productWell attestedJaffa orangeThe port that named the orange is now a neighborhood of Tel Aviv.Jaffa · Israel · From its productWell attestedjalapeñoThe pepper is named for Xalapa in Veracruz.Xalapa · Mexico · From its productWell attestedJamestown weedJimsonweed is Jamestown weed, worn down by centuries of saying it fast.Jamestown · Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha · From the placeWell attestedjapanThe lacquer is simply the country, used as a verb.Japan · Japan · From the placeWell attestedJapanimationThe word English speakers used for anime before they used anime.Japan · Japan · IndirectWell attestedJapanophileThe word arrived with the first wave of Western enthusiasm for Japanese art.Japan · Japan · IndirectWell attestedjarandoliteSerbia turns out to hold one of Europe's few boron basins, and this mineral is its signature.Baljevac na Ibru · Serbia · From the placeWell attestedjavaA cup of java is named for an island.Java · Indonesia · From its productWell attestedjeansThe trousers point to Genoa, not to the American West.Genoa · Italy · From its productWell attestedJena glassModern laboratory glassware was invented in one small Thuringian university town.Jena · Germany · From its productWell attestedJericho walkCongregations still march the route of a siege from the Book of Joshua.Jericho · Palestine · From the placeWell attestedjerseyThe pullover is named for a Channel Island.Jersey · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedJersey DevilIt was the Leeds Devil before newspapers renamed it for the whole state.New Jersey · United States · From the placeWell attestedJersey girlThe stereotype and the affectionate answer to it have been running against each other for forty years.New Jersey · United States · From the placeProbablejetThe black stone is usually traced to a river in Lycia.Gagas · Turkey · Historical nameProbablejimsonweedThe weed is a worn-down Jamestown.Jamestown · Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha · From the placeWell attestedjipijapaThe Panama hat's fibre is named for an Ecuadorian town.Jipijapa · Ecuador · From its productWell attestedJoachimsthalerThe full form of the word that became dollar.Jachymov · Czech Republic · From the placeWell attestedjodhpursThe riding trousers are named for a city in Rajasthan.Jodhpur · India · From its productWell attestedjohachidoliteThe original 1942 chemical formula was wrong, and it took thirty-five years to fix.North Hamgyong Province · North Korea · From the placeWell attestedJuarezA border city named for a president lends its name onward.Ciudad Juarez · Mexico · IndirectWell attestedJumeirah JaneOne stretch of Dubai beachfront stands in for an entire way of life.Jumeirah · United Arab Emirates · From the placeWell attestedkabochaThe Japanese squash is named for Cambodia.Cambodia · Cambodia · Historical nameWell attestedkamaishiliteThe mine behind the name also gave Japan its first Western style blast furnace.Kamaishi · Japan · From the placeWell attestedKansas City shuffleThe phrase was a jazz record title before anyone wrote it down as a con.Kansas City · United States · From the placeDisputedkaolinThe clay behind porcelain is named for a hill in Jiangxi.Jingdezhen · People's Republic of China · From its productWell attestedkarakulThe sheep is named for a town in Uzbekistan.Qorako'l · Uzbekistan · From the placeWell attestedkarpatkaThe cake is named for a mountain range because its cracked top looks like snowy peaks.Carpathians · Serbia · From the placeWell attestedkasoliteIt comes from the mine that supplied most of the uranium for the first atomic bombs.Kasolo · Democratic Republic of the Congo · From the placeWell attestedkawazuliteIts synthetic analog is one of the best-studied thermoelectric and topological insulator materials.Shizuoka Prefecture · Japan · From the placeWell attestedKensuckyOne consonant swap turns a state's name into a verdict on the state.Kentucky · United States · From the placeWell attestedKentucky rifleAlmost every one of them was made in Pennsylvania.Kentucky · United States · From the placeWell attestedkersantiteThe same stone carved into Brittany's roadside calvaries became an international rock name.Loperhet · France · From the placeWell attestedKey limeThe Florida Keys lime is a Southeast Asian fruit that Spanish ships carried west.Florida Keys · United States · From the placeWell attestedkhmaraliteThe bay it is named for honors a Soviet tractor driver killed on an Antarctic expedition in 1956.Khmara Bay · Antarctica · From the placeWell attestedKhorasan wheatThe seed was sold as King Tut's wheat; it is named for a region in Iran.Khorasan · Iran · Historical nameWell attestedKiev cakeA factory mistake in 1956 is the cake's own official origin story.Kyiv · Ukraine · From the placeWell attestedkimblewickA Buckinghamshire hamlet gave its name to a bit and then lost control of the spelling.Buckinghamshire · United Kingdom · From its productProbableKing Island brown thornbillOne island's thornbill may be down to a few dozen birds in scraps of scrub.King Island · Australia · From the placeWell attestedKobe beefThe cattle are not from Kobe; the foreigners who ate them were.Kobe · Japan · From its productWell attestedKomodo dragonThe largest lizard on earth was a rumor science did not check until 1910.Komodo · Indonesia · From the placeWell attestedKopiteThe word for a Liverpool fan comes from a hill in KwaZulu-Natal where Liverpool men died in 1900.Spion Kop · South Africa · IndirectWell attestedKorean ageA law in 2023 made an entire country younger overnight.South Korea · South Korea · From its peopleWell attestedKotlinNamed after an island on purpose, because Java is an island too.Kotlin Island · Russia · From the placeWell attestedKrems whiteEnglish mangled the Austrian name so thoroughly that the paint is now sold as Cremnitz white.Krems · Austria · From its productProbablekushThe cannabis strain is named for a mountain range.Hindu Kush · Pakistan · From the placeProbableKyoto ProtocolTreaties take the name of whichever city happened to host the meeting.Kyoto · Japan · From the placeWell attestedLabradorThe dog is named for a northern coast.Labrador · Canada · From the placeWell attestedlaconicA tight-lipped style is named for Sparta’s region.Sparta · Greece · From its peopleWell attestedLas Vegas effectInterface designers borrowed the Strip as a warning label.Las Vegas · United States · From the placeProbablelaurdaliteOne of the rock names Brøgger coined while mapping the Oslo rift, spelled the way the valley was spelled in 1890.Lardal · Norway · From the placeWell attestedlaureliteOne Arizona mine produced four brand new minerals in a single 1989 paper.Laurel Canyon · United States · From the placeWell attestedlautenthaliteA mining town in the Harz that had been worked out for centuries still had a new species in its waste rock.Lautenthal · Germany · From the placeWell attestedLeaning Tower of PisaThe tower began to lean before the third story was finished, and the masons tried to correct it as they built.Pisa · Italy · From the placeWell attestedleghornThe chicken carries the English name for Livorno.Livorno · Italy · Historical nameWell attestedlesbianThe word comes from a Greek island in the Aegean.Lesbos · Greece · From the placeWell attestedlherzoliteGeologists model the whole of Earth's upper mantle on a rock named after one small Pyrenean lake.Étang de Lers · France · From the placeWell attestedlidoBritish swimming pools are named for a Venetian sandbar.Lido di Venezia · Italy · From the placeWell attestedlie back and think of EnglandThe famous Victorian diary behind the phrase has never been produced.England · United Kingdom · From the placeProbablelike Blackpool IlluminationsAn entire seaside light festival, reduced to a simile for a red face.Blackpool · United Kingdom · From the placeProbablelima beanThe bean is named for the Peruvian capital.Lima · Peru · From its productWell attestedLima syndromeThe captors released more than three hundred hostages before the siege was two weeks old.Lima · Peru · From the placeWell attestedLimburgerThe cheese is named for a duchy split across three countries.Limburg · Netherlands · From its productWell attestedLimburger cheeseThe smell comes from a bacterium that also lives on human skin.Limburg · Belgium · From its productWell attestedlimerickThe verse form is named for an Irish city, for reasons no one has pinned down.Limerick · Ireland · From the placeProbablelimousineThe luxury car is named for a cloak from Limousin.Limoges · France · From its productWell attestedLincolnshire spinachEngland's older spinach survives as a market-stall crop in one county.Lincolnshire · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableLipizzanThe dressage horse is named for a stud farm in Slovenia.Lipica · Slovenia · From the placeWell attestedlivermoriumThe element honors a laboratory, the laboratory honors a town, and the town honors a Californian cattle rancher.Livermore · United States · IndirectWell attestedLiverpool soundMerseybeat by another name, exported worldwide by four of its practitioners.Liverpool · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableLogan breadBaked for an attempt on Canada's highest mountain, then kept by hikers.Mount Logan · Canada · From the placeProbableLombardy poplarEvery Lombardy poplar is a male clone of a single mutant tree.Lombardy · Italy · From the placeWell attestedLondon broilOrder London broil in London and nobody will know what you are asking for.London · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableLong Island iced teaIt contains no tea, and two different Long Islands claim it.Long Island · United States · From the placeDisputedLucerne hammerNamed after the arsenal where the surviving examples happened to be stored.Lucerne · Switzerland · From the placeProbablelutetiumGerman chemistry journals refused the name for fifty years and printed a rival one instead.Paris · France · IndirectWell attestedLyme diseaseThe disease is named for a town in Connecticut.Lyme · United States · From the placeWell attestedmacassar oilIt gave us the antimacassar: the cloth that saved chairs from greasy heads.Makassar · Indonesia · From its productProbablemacédoineThe dish is named for a region that Europeans thought of as a patchwork of peoples.Macedonia · Ottoman Empire · From the placeWell attestedMadchesterTwo video directors invented the word to avoid naming the real city in a film script.Manchester · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedmadisonThe race is named for a New York arena that was demolished more than a century ago.Madison Square and Madison Square Park · United States · From the placeWell attestedmadrasThe checked cotton carries the old name of Chennai.Chennai · India · From its productWell attestedMadridistaThe fan word preserves the club's older name, from before the king got involved.Madrid · Spain · From the placeWell attestedmagentaThe color is named for a battle in Lombardy.Magenta · Italy · Historical nameWell attestedmagnesiumOne ancient Greek district gave English magnesium, manganese and magnet.Magnesia Regional Unit · Greece · IndirectProbablemagnetThe lodestone is named for Magnesia.Magnesia · Greece · From the placeWell attestedMaine CoonThe coon half rests on a raccoon story that is biologically impossible.Maine · United States · From the placeWell attestedmajolicaThe Italian pottery is named for a Spanish island.Mallorca · Spain · Historical nameWell attestedmalmseyThe sweet wine is a worn-down Greek fortress town.Monemvasia · Greece · Historical nameWell attestedmalvoisieThe wine is named for a fortified rock reached by a single causeway.Monemvasia · Greece · From its productWell attestedManchurian candidateThe brainwashing happens in Manchuria because that is where the novel's Chinese and Soviet handlers could plausibly meet.Manchuria · People's Republic of China · From its peopleWell attestedmanganeseThe metal is a scrambled form of Magnesia, like magnesium and magnet.Magnesia · Greece · Historical nameWell attestedManhattanThe cocktail is named for a New York island.Manhattan · United States · From the placeWell attestedManhattan distanceA distance metric named for a street plan you cannot cut diagonally across.Manhattan · United States · From the placeWell attestedmanilaThe envelope is named for a Philippine city.Manila · Philippines · From its productWell attestedmanila envelopeManila paper came from a banana relative, and today's envelopes contain none of it.Manila · Philippines · From its productWell attestedmanila paperThe hemp it was made from is not hemp at all; it is a banana relative.Manila · Philippines · From its productWell attestedManitoba mapleThe only North American maple with compound leaves; it grows far beyond Manitoba.Manitoba · Canada · From the placeWell attestedmarathonThe long race is named for a plain in Attica.Marathon · Greece · From the placeWell attestedMarseillaiseThe anthem is named for the volunteers who sang it into Paris.Marseille · France · From its peopleWell attestedMarseille soapProtected by royal edict in 1688 and by nothing whatsoever today.Marseille · France · From its productWell attestedmarvel of PeruIts English name says Peru; its Latin name points at a town in Mexico.Peru · Peru · From the placeProbablemarzipanOne account traces the sweet to a Burmese port, but it is far from settled.Mottama · Myanmar · DisputedDisputedmayonnaiseOne story ties the sauce to Mahón. Many etymologists are not convinced.Mahón · Spain · DisputedDisputedmbobomkuliteOne South African cave yielded three new minerals in a single paper.Mpumalanga · South Africa · From the placeWell attestedmeanderA winding path is named for a river in Anatolia.Büyük Menderes · Turkey · From the placeWell attestedmeccaAny enthusiast's destination borrows one city in the Hejaz.Mecca · Saudi Arabia · From the placeWell attestedMechlinThe lace carries the English name for Mechelen.Mechelen · Belgium · From its productWell attestedmeet one's WaterlooAlmost none of the battle of Waterloo was fought at Waterloo.Waterloo · Belgium · From the placeWell attestedMelbaPeach Melba and Melba toast go back to Melbourne.Melbourne · Australia · IndirectWell attestedMelba toastNamed for a soprano, who was named for Melbourne.Melbourne · Australia · IndirectWell attestedmelocotonBuried in the word is a Cretan city that also gave English the quince.Kydonia · Greece · IndirectProbableMersey soundA river named the sound of Liverpool, then named a bestselling poetry book.River Mersey · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedMerseybeatThe genre borrowed its name from a local newspaper before the newspaper's name meant a genre.River Mersey · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedMexican overdriveA gearbox setting named after a country that had nothing to do with it.Mexico · Mexico · From its peopleWell attestedMexican standoffThe three-way gunfight everyone pictures is a hundred years younger than the phrase.Mexico · Mexico · From the placeWell attestedMexican waveBritish television named it for Mexico; American crowds had done it for years.Mexico · Mexico · From the placeWell attestedMexpatThe reverse of Texpat: the same ending, the opposite direction of travel.Mexico · Mexico · IndirectWell attestedMiami bassA Florida genre defined by a Japanese drum machine nobody wanted at first.Miami · United States · From the placeWell attestedMichigan rollThe con is over a century old and nobody wrote down what Michigan had to do with it.Michigan · United States · From the placeProbablemilanesaThe South American cutlet is Milanese.Milan · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedmillinerThe hatmaker is a Milanese, spelling aside.Milan · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedmillineryThe trade name, like the milliner, is Milanese.Milan · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedMiltownThe first blockbuster tranquilliser is named for a New Jersey borough.Milltown · United States · From the placeWell attestedMilwaukee protocolNamed for the hospital that saved an unvaccinated rabies patient in 2004.Milwaukee · United States · From the placeWell attestedMinamata diseaseAn industrial disaster gave a Japanese city's name to a disease.Minamata · Japan · From the placeWell attestedminehilliteMine Hill is the outcrop that gave away the Franklin zinc orebody in the first place.Mine Hill · United States · From the placeWell attestedMinnesota iceThe phrase exists only because an older phrase rhymed.Minnesota · United States · From the placeProbableMinnesota niceThe phrase names a politeness that outsiders often read as a closed door.Minnesota · United States · From the placeWell attestedminyuliteThe place on the label is a watering hole in the Western Australian wheatbelt.Dandaragan · Australia · From the placeWell attestedmirepoixThe vegetable base is named for a duke, whose title is a town.Mirepoix · France · IndirectProbableMishimaThe inlaid pottery is named for a Japanese city's almanac.Mishima · Japan · From the placeWell attestedMississippianNamed for the river, not the state: the reference is to limestone bluffs a long way upstream of Mississippi.Mississippi River · United States · From the placeWell attestedMissouri canaryMissouri bred the mules that hauled the American West, and the bray is the punchline.Missouri · United States · From the placeProbableMissouri toothpickFrontier humor gave the largest knife in America the daintiest name it could find.Missouri · United States · From the placeProbablemochaThe coffee is named for a Red Sea port.Al-Mukha · Yemen · From its productWell attestedMogadishu lineOne firefight in Somalia gave peacekeeping doctrine a boundary and a name.Mogadishu · Somalia · From the placeProbablemoldaviteThe stone is named after a Bohemian river, but it was made in Bavaria by a meteorite.Vltava · Czech Republic · IndirectWell attestedMonte Carlo fallacyA Monaco roulette wheel landed on black 26 times and ruined the table betting red.Monte Carlo · Monaco · From the placeWell attestedMonterey JackHalf the name is a California town; the other half is probably a man named Jacks.Monterey · United States · From the placeProbableMontreal procedurePatients stayed awake and described their own memories as the surgeon probed.Montreal · Canada · From the placeWell attestedMontreal ProtocolThe treaty named for a Canadian city was the first every country ratified.Montreal · Canada · From the placeWell attestedmontroyaliteThe mineral is named for the hill that gave Montreal its name, and was found in a quarry across the same city.Mount Royal · Canada · From the placeWell attestedmordeniteA crumb of Nova Scotian basalt now underwrites a chunk of the world's petrochemical industry.Morden · Canada · From the placeWell attestedmornayNobody can settle whether the sauce honors a French village or a Huguenot diplomat.Mornay · France · DisputedDisputedmoroccoThe bookbinder’s leather is named for Morocco.Fez · Morocco · From its productWell attestedmoscheliteOne of very few natural iodides, from a German mercury hill mined since the Middle Ages.Moschel mountain · Germany · From the placeWell attestedMoscow saladThe original recipe was a restaurant secret and it died with its chef.Moscow · Soviet Union · From the placeWell attestedmousselineThe French cousin of muslin, from the same Iraqi city.Mosul · Iraq · Historical nameWell attestedmuensterThe cheese is named for an Alsatian valley town.Munster · Ireland · From its productWell attestedmulliteAlmost every porcelain cup and furnace brick in the world is held together by needles of a mineral named after a Hebridean island.Isle of Mull · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedmuslinThe cotton is named for Mosul.Mosul · Iraq · From its productWell attestedNabulsi soapA whole export industry built on three ingredients: olive oil, water and ash.Nablus · Palestine · From its peopleWell attestedNanaimo barThe bar's earliest printed recipes may not come from Nanaimo at all.Nanaimo · Canada · From the placeProbablenankeenThe yellow cotton is named for Nanjing.Nanjing · People's Republic of China · From its productWell attestedNashville hot chickenTennessee's signature dish began, by family account, as an act of revenge.Nashville · United States · From the placeWell attestedNashville soundNashville answered rock and roll by sanding the twang off country music.Nashville · United States · From the placeWell attestedNeanderthalA whole human species is named for a small German valley.Neandertal · Germany · From the placeWell attestedNebraska IceIt is the rare ice that shrinks rather than expands when it freezes.Nebraska · United States · From the placeWell attestednebraskanicAn adjective that exists for exactly one molecule, carrying the name of the state where it was identified.Nebraska · United States · From the placeWell attestednebraskanic acidIt has a twin called wuhanic acid, because two laboratories shared the discovery.Nebraska · United States · From the placeWell attestedneroliThe perfume oil is named for an Italian town, through a princess.Nerola · Italy · IndirectWell attestedNessieThe nickname came out of a newspaper's children's drawing competition, months after the first modern sighting.Loch Ness · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedNevada TriangleThe mountain weather does the work that the mystery gets credit for.Nevada · United States · From the placeProbableNew England clam chowderA Maine legislator once introduced a bill to make tomatoes in chowder illegal.New England · United States · From the placeWell attestedNew Jersey teaThe tea colonists drank when they refused to drink tea.New Jersey · United States · From the placeWell attestedNew York minuteImpatience has a city attached to it.New York City · United States · From the placeWell attestedNew York secondThe shortest measurable interval, defined by the driver behind you.New York City · United States · From the placeProbableNew York stripThe same steak becomes a Kansas City strip once you leave New York.New York City · United States · From the placeProbableNew York-style pizzaThe famous it-is-the-water explanation has never actually been demonstrated.New York City · United States · From the placeWell attestedNewfoundland speed bumpMoose are not native to Newfoundland; the island's herd descends from a handful released a century ago.Newfoundland · Canada · From the placeWell attestedNice modelA French city gave its name to the standard account of how the solar system settled down.Nice · France · From the placeWell attestedNicene CreedA creed recited worldwide is named for a Turkish town now famous for tiles.İznik · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedNicene FaithThe creed shared by most of Christianity is named for a Turkish tile town.İznik · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedNicene-Constantinopolitan CreedThe creed recited every Sunday is named after two towns now in Turkey.İznik · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedNiçoise saladThe salad is the adjective for Nice.Nice · France · From its peopleWell attestedNixon in ChinaThe man who built a career on anti communism was the one who could shake Mao's hand.People's Republic of China · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedNokiaThe phone company is named for a river and a town.Nokia · Finland · From the placeWell attestednorovirusThe winter vomiting bug is named for a town in Ohio.Norwalk · United States · From the placeWell attestedNorwegian forest catKing Olav V declared it the national cat of Norway.Norway · Norway · From its peopleWell attestednot in Kansas anymoreOne line of movie dialogue turned a real state into a byword for normality.Kansas · United States · From the placeWell attestedNueva EcijaA Spanish governor named a baking Philippine plain after the hottest town in Andalusia.Écija · Spain · From the placeWell attestedNueva VizcayaThe name is New Biscay, carried from the Basque coast to a valley in Luzon.Biscay · Spain · From the placeWell attestedOaxacaThe stretched-curd cheese is named for a southern Mexican state.Oaxaca · Mexico · From its productWell attestedOckelbo diseaseOne mosquito-borne virus carries three names, one per country it turns up in.Ockelbo · Sweden · From the placeProbableOerlikonThe anti-aircraft gun is named for a Zurich suburb.Oerlikon · Switzerland · From the placeWell attestedOhio Valley diseaseA lung infection named for the valley where almost every resident meets it.Ohio River · United States · From the placeProbableohmiliteThe type locality no longer exists as a place name: the town was folded into a neighboring city in 2005.Ōmi · Japan · From the placeWell attestedokadaLagos motorcycle taxis are named after an airline, which was named after its founder's home town.Okada · Nigeria · IndirectWell attestedokayamaliteThe mine that produced it already had a mineral named after it, so the next find took the name of the whole prefecture.Okayama Prefecture · Japan · From the placeWell attestedOlomouc cheeseNamed for Olomouc, but actually made in a small town called Lostice.Olomouc · Czech Republic · From its productWell attestedolomoucineA laboratory compound is named for a Moravian city.Olomouc · Czech Republic · From the placeWell attestedOlympicThe games are named for a sanctuary, not for Mount Olympus.Olympia · Greece · From the placeWell attestedomineliteA blue borosilicate from a mountain that has been closed to women for over a thousand years as a Shugendō training ground.Mount Ōmine · Japan · From the placeWell attestedorangeiteThe rock was renamed in 1995 for a republic that had stopped existing in 1902.Orange Free State Province · South Africa · Historical nameWell attestedorvietanA famous fake cure-all is named for the same Umbrian town.Orvieto · Italy · From its productWell attestedorvietiteOne of a set of obsolete rock names coined for the potassium rich volcanoes north of Rome, each named after its own town.Orvieto · Italy · From the placeProbableOrvietoThe wine is named for a town on a tufa outcrop.Orvieto · Italy · From its productWell attestedOrvieto wareCollectors named a whole medieval pottery style after one Umbrian hill town.Orvieto · Italy · From its productProbableottreliteThe Ardennes hamlet behind the name also supplies the yellow whetstone that barbers sharpen razors on.Ottré · Belgium · From the placeWell attestedOxford commaA university press's house style became a transatlantic identity badge.Oxford · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedpaisleyThe pattern is from Kashmir. The English name is a Scottish mill town.Paisley · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedpalaceEvery palace in English is one hill in Rome.Palatine Hill · Italy · From the placeWell attestedPanama hatThe hat is named for the wrong country.Panama · Panama · Historical nameWell attestedPanamaxA whole class of ship is sized by one canal.Panama Canal · Panama · From the placeWell attestedpannoniasaurThe first mosasaur ever found in river sediment carries the name of a Roman province.Pannonia · Roman Empire · Historical nameWell attestedPará nutBrazil nuts are gathered across Amazonia; Pará was only the export door.Pará · Brazil · From its productWell attestedparacressOne flower head makes the tongue buzz and the saliva run.Pará · Brazil · From its productWell attestedParis-BrestThe pastry is a bicycle wheel, baked for a 750-mile race.Paris · France · From the placeProbableparmesanThe grater cheese is an English take on Parma.Parma · Italy · From its productWell attestedParnassianA limestone mountain above Delphi became the postal address of poetry itself.Mount Parnassus · Greece · From the placeWell attestedParnassusPoetry itself is a Greek mountain.Mount Parnassus · Greece · From the placeWell attestedpavaneThe stately dance is usually traced to Padua.Padua · Italy · Historical nameProbablepeachThe fruit is a Persian apple in old botanical Latin.Persepolis · Iran · Historical nameWell attestedPeach MelbaThe dessert honors a soprano who built her stage name out of Melbourne.Melbourne · Australia · IndirectWell attestedPearl HarborThe harbor is named for the pearl oysters that once grew in it.Pearl Harbor · United States · From the placeWell attestedPeking duckThe dish carries the older English spelling of Beijing.Beijing · People's Republic of China · Historical nameWell attestedPennsylvania barnIts overhanging upper floor came from Alpine Europe, not from Pennsylvania.Pennsylvania · United States · From the placeWell attestedPennsylvanianNorth America cut the Carboniferous in half and named the halves after a state and a river.Pennsylvania · United States · From the placeWell attestedPeruvian marching powderThe powder keeps you marching and the adjective says where the coca grew.Peru · Peru · From its peopleWell attestedpheasantThe bird is named for a river at the edge of the Black Sea.Poti · Georgia · From the placeWell attestedPhiladelphia lawyerThe compliment may date from a Philadelphian who won a New York libel case.Philadelphia · United States · From the placeProbablePhilly cheesesteakThe sandwich is named for the city that argues about it.Philadelphia · United States · From its productWell attestedPhrygian capThe cap of liberty is named for an Anatolian region.Phrygia · Turkey · From the placeWell attestedPierian springInspiration is a spring in northern Greece.Pieria · Greece · From the placeWell attestedpilsnerThe world's default beer style is named for a Bohemian city.Plzeň · Czech Republic · From its productWell attestedPiltdown ManA human skull, an orangutan jaw, and forty years of British paleontology.Piltdown · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedpiscoThe brandy is named for a Peruvian port.Pisco · Peru · From its productWell attestedpistolThe handgun's name may come from Pistoia, or from a Czech word for a pipe.Pistoia · Italy · DisputedDisputedPitt Street farmerEach Australian capital has its own version of the insult, keyed to its main business street.Pitt Street · Australia · From the placeWell attestedPittsburgheseThe name was invented by newspapers rather than linguists, and it turned an accent into a souvenir.Pittsburgh · United States · From the placeWell attestedplain as Dunstable highwayAn old proverb measures plainness against a dead straight Roman road.Dunstable · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableplain DunstableThe plainest thing in Tudor England was the road to Dunstable.Dunstable · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableplaster of ParisThe plaster is named for the gypsum quarries of Montmartre.Paris · France · From its productWell attestedplay in PeoriaVaudeville treated one Illinois city as the test market for the entire country.Peoria · United States · From the placeWell attestedPolish bedA Polish queen of France made the shape fashionable at Versailles.Poland · Poland · From its peopleWell attestedpolonaiseThe dance is just the French adjective for Polish.Poland · Poland · From its peopleWell attestedpoloniumMarie Curie named it for a country that did not exist on the map of 1898.Poland · Poland · From the placeWell attestedpomfret cakePomfret is the old English name for Pontefract; Shakespeare used it too.Pontefract · United Kingdom · Historical nameWell attestedPontefract cakeThe liquorice sweet is named for a Yorkshire town.Pontefract · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedPontusA sea's name became a region's.Pontus · Turkey · From the placeWell attestedportThe dessert wine is named for the harbor that sent it out.Porto · Portugal · From its productWell attestedport wineNamed for the harbor it left from, not the valley it grew in.Porto · Portugal · From its productWell attestedPortland cementThe cement is named for the stone it was said to resemble.Isle of Portland · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedpozzolanaRoman concrete is named for a town near Naples.Pozzuoli · Italy · From its productWell attestedpretuliteOne of the very few minerals in which scandium is an essential, named element rather than a trace.Pretulalpe · Austria · From the placeWell attestedproseccoThe sparkling wine is named for a village near Trieste.Prosecco · Italy · From its productWell attestedPrussian blueThe first modern synthetic pigment is named for a vanished kingdom.Prussia · Poland · From the placeWell attestedPrussian redThe red inherited its name from a blue.Prussia · Poland · IndirectProbablePuertopiaThe coiners dropped the name once someone told them what it looked like in Latin.Puerto Rico · Puerto Rico · IndirectWell attestedQ-shipThe letter is usually explained by an Irish port that has since changed its name back.Cóbh · Ireland · DisputedDisputedquinceThe fruit is named for a city in Crete.Chania · Greece · Historical nameWell attestedQuonsetThe wartime hut is named for a point in Rhode Island.Quonset Point · United States · From the placeWell attestedQuonset hutThe all-American hut is a copy of a British one, named in Narragansett.Quonset Point · United States · From the placeWell attestedrandanniteFrench dynamite was soaked into this stuff, quarried from peat bogs in the Auvergne.Randan · France · From the placeWell attestedrauenthaliteThere is a Rauenthal in Germany famous for Riesling; this is not it.Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines · France · From the placeWell attestedrengeiteIt was found by sawing open jade pebbles picked off a Japanese beach.Mount Renge · Japan · From the placeWell attestedRhode Island RedA village in the smallest state built a stone monument to a chicken.Rhode Island · United States · From the placeWell attestedRhodesian RidgebackThe country in the name is gone: Rhodesia has been Zimbabwe since 1980.Zimbabwe · Zimbabwe · Historical nameWell attestedrichelliteNamed for a village outside Visé, the Belgian town better known for a tenth century goose recipe.Richelle · Belgium · From the placeWell attestedroad to DamascusOne of the world's oldest cities is now shorthand for changing your mind.Damascus · Syria · From the placeWell attestedRocky Mountain canaryThe bray of a pack donkey in a mining camp was nobody's idea of birdsong.Rocky Mountains · Canada · From the placeWell attestedRocky Mountain Kool-AidFor decades it could not legally be sold east of the Mississippi, which is what made it worth smuggling.Rocky Mountains · Canada · From the placeWell attestedRocky Mountain oysterNothing about it comes from the sea, and that is the entire joke.Rocky Mountains · Canada · From the placeWell attestedRocky Mountain spotted feverThe disease named for the Rockies is now mostly a problem far from them.Rocky Mountains · Canada · From the placeWell attestedromaineThe other name for cos lettuce is simply Roman.Rome · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedRoman noseA facial profile is named for a city's portrait busts.Rome · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedRome wasn't built in a dayThe proverb about Rome reached English through medieval France.Rome · Italy · From the placeWell attestedroquefortThe blue cheese is a village in the Aveyron.Roquefort-sur-Soulzon · France · From its productWell attestedrose of JerichoNot a rose, and the one usually sold is not from Jericho either.Jericho · Palestine · From the placeWell attestedRoss River feverNamed for a small river in Townsville where the virus was first trapped.Ross River · Australia · From the placeWell attestedRottweilerThe dog is named for a town on the Neckar.Rottweil · Germany · From the placeWell attestedrugbyThe game is named for the school that played it.Rugby · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedRussian reversalA Cold War stage bit that outlived the country it was mocking.Russia · Russia · From the placeProbableRussian rouletteThere is no real evidence Russians ever played the game named after them.Russia · Russia · From its peopleProbableRussian saladAbroad it is Russian salad; in Russia it is named for its chef, Olivier.Russia · Russia · From its peopleWell attestedsaliteNamed by the Brazilian statesman who also discovered lithium's mineral while working in Sweden.Sala · Sweden · From the placeWell attestedSalvadoran quesadillaA quesadilla with no tortilla: in El Salvador it is a sweet cheese pound cake.El Salvador · El Salvador · From its peopleWell attestedSan Francisco soundA ballroom scene in one city became the national label for psychedelia.San Francisco · United States · From the placeWell attestedsandwichThe meal is named for an earl. The earl is named for a town in Kent.Sandwich · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedsardineThe fish may be named for Sardinia. It also may not.Sardinia · Italy · DisputedDisputedsatinThe cloth is usually traced to a Chinese port's Arabic name.Quanzhou · People's Republic of China · Historical nameProbablesatsumaThe orange is named for a former Japanese province.Satsuma Province · Japan · Historical nameWell attestedSavoy cabbageThe wrinkles are named for an Alpine duchy that no longer exists.Savoy · France · From the placeProbablescandiumMendeleev predicted it as eka-boron and a Swede found it, so it was named for the whole peninsula.Scandinavia · Denmark · From the placeWell attestedSchengen AreaFree movement for hundreds of millions is named for a village of a few hundred.Schengen · Luxembourg · From the placeWell attestedScotch tapeA brand name preserves an old slur about thrift.Scotland · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedScunthorpe problemA whole class of software bug is named after a Lincolnshire town's spelling.Scunthorpe · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedSeattle rollIt is named for a city rather than a tradition: nobody eats it in Japan.Seattle · United States · From the placeWell attestedsell coal to NewcastleThe Tyne imports coal now, which rather ruins the joke.Newcastle upon Tyne · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedsell coals to NewcastleNewcastle now imports its coal, which rather finishes the joke.Newcastle upon Tyne · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedseltzerFizz is named for a German spring.Selters · Germany · From its productWell attestedseltzer waterSeltzer is a worn-down spelling of Selters, a spring village in Hesse.Niederselters · Germany · From its productWell attestedsend to CoventryNobody can prove why Coventry, of all places, became the silent treatment.Coventry · United Kingdom · From the placeDisputedsenegaliteOne of the few minerals named for a West African country, and still known mainly from its one deposit.Senegal · Senegal · From the placeWell attestedserendipityThe word was invented from an old Arabic name for Sri Lanka.Sri Lanka · Sri Lanka · Historical nameWell attestedSeville orangeThe marmalade orange is named for an Andalusian city.Seville · Spain · From its productWell attestedSèvres wareA king's porcelain works made a Paris suburb a synonym for luxury.Sèvres · France · From the placeWell attestedshallotThe onion is named for an ancient Levantine port.Ashkelon · Israel · Historical nameWell attestedshanghaiThe verb is named for a port, not for a method invented there alone.Shanghai · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedSharon fruitNot a woman's name: the Sharon is a coastal plain in Israel.Sharon plain · Israel · From its productProbablesherryThe wine is an English attempt at saying Jerez.Jerez de la Frontera · Spain · From its productWell attestedshipshape and Bristol fashionBristol's tide was so extreme that ships had to be packed to survive sitting on mud.Bristol · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableShirazThe grape may be named for a Persian city, or not at all.Shiraz · Iran · DisputedDisputedShitsburghA city was insulted so publicly that its own newspapers would print only the rhyme.Pittsburgh · United States · From the placeWell attestedshut one's eyes and think of EnglandThe Victorian diary everyone cites for this line has never once been produced.England · United Kingdom · From the placeDisputedSiamese twinIt comes from two men's stage billing, and their country has since renamed itself.Thailand · Thailand · Historical nameWell attestedsiennaThe pigment is named for a Tuscan city.Siena · Italy · From its productWell attestedskutteruditeThe cobalt from these mines colored the blue of European glass and porcelain for a century.Modum Municipality · Norway · From the placeWell attestedSloane RangerThe name is a pun welding a Chelsea square to a masked cowboy.Sloane Square · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedsolecismA grammar error is named for a city whose Greek sounded wrong to Athens.Soloi · Turkey · From the placeWell attestedsolid as the Rock of GibraltarAn insurance company built a global brand on one limestone headland.Gibraltar · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedSolutreanA limestone crag now better known for white wine names a stone toolmaking tradition.Rock of Solutré · France · From the placeWell attestedsomething is rotten in the state of DenmarkHamlet does not say it; a guard on the battlements does.Denmark · Denmark · From the placeWell attestedsorghumThe name may credit Syria for a crop that actually came out of Africa.Syria · Syria · IndirectDisputedspaEvery spa is named for one Belgian town.Spa · Belgium · From the placeWell attestedSpanish flyNot a fly, not especially Spanish, and far more dangerous than romantic.Spain · Spain · From the placeWell attestedSpanish influenzaThe 1918 pandemic is named for the only country reporting it honestly.Spain · Spain · From its peopleWell attestedSpanish jasmineSpanish jasmine is from South Asia; Spain was only the middleman.Spain · Spain · From the placeProbableSpenard divorceThe phrase entered Anchorage speech during a murder trial in 1959.Spenard · United States · From the placeWell attestedsrirachaThe chilli sauce is named for a Thai coastal town.Si Racha · Thailand · From its productWell attestedSt. Paul sandwichNamed for Saint Paul, sold only in St. Louis, and nobody can explain why.Saint Paul · United States · DisputedDisputedstellenboschA South African town became a verb for sidelining someone.Stellenbosch · South Africa · From the placeWell attestedsterlinghilliteNamed for the hill, not the museum that now occupies the mine inside it.Sterling Hill · United States · From the placeWell attestedStockholm syndromeThe syndrome is named for a bank robbery.Stockholm · Sweden · From the placeWell attestedstorrowBoston has a verb for a specific accident that happens on one road every September.Storrow Drive · United States · From the placeWell attestedstromboliThe stuffed bread is named for an Italian volcano.Stromboli · Italy · From the placeWell attestedsuedeThe leather is named for Sweden, in French.Sweden · Sweden · From its productWell attestedsurreyThe carriage is named for an English county.Surrey · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedSwedish massageSwedes call it classic massage; the strokes may be Dutch, not Swedish.Sweden · Sweden · From its peopleDisputedSwedish modelSweden made buying sex a crime while leaving selling it legal, and the arrangement now travels under the country's name.Sweden · Sweden · From its peopleWell attestedsweet home AlabamaA 1974 rock anthem became shorthand for an accusation nobody spells out.Alabama · United States · From the placeWell attestedswim the ThamesIt is the answer to swimming the Tiber, with the current running the other way.River Thames · United Kingdom · From the placeWell attestedswim the TiberConverts swim one river toward Rome and another toward Constantinople.Tiber · Italy · From the placeProbableSwiss bank accountSwiss secrecy became law in 1934 and was largely dismantled by 2018.Switzerland · Switzerland · From its peopleWell attestedSwiss cheeseThe holes made a country into a cheese.Switzerland · Switzerland · From its peopleWell attestedsybariteThe pleasure-seeker is named for a vanished Greek city in Italy.Sybaris · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedsybariticThe adjective for luxury is a Greek colony in Italy.Sybaris · Italy · From its peopleWell attestedtabascoThe sauce is named for a Mexican state.Tabasco · Mexico · From its productWell attestedTabasco sauceThe sauce is named for a Mexican state.Tabasco · Mexico · From its productWell attestedtabbyThe striped cat is named for a striped silk from Baghdad.Baghdad · Iraq · Historical nameWell attestedtake a wrong turn at AlbuquerqueBugs Bunny travels by tunnel, so one missed turn under New Mexico explains every wrong country he surfaces in.Albuquerque · United States · From the placeWell attestedtake French leaveThe French return the insult precisely: they call it leaving English style.France · France · From its peopleWell attestedtangerineThe fruit is named for the port of Tangier.Tangier · Morocco · From its productWell attestedtanzaniteThe gem trade rejected the mineral's real name as sounding too much like suicide.Tanzania · Tanzania · From the placeWell attestedtarantellaThe dance and the spider share a city.Taranto · Italy · From the placeWell attestedtarantulaThe spider is named for Taranto.Taranto · Italy · From the placeWell attestedTasmanian devilThe devil is named after an island named after a Dutch sea captain.Tasmania · Australia · From the placeWell attestedtelemarkThe ski turn is named for a Norwegian county.Telemark · Norway · From the placeWell attestedtelemark skiingModern skiing was largely worked out by farmers in one Norwegian county.Telemark · Norway · From the placeWell attestedtelemark turnA Norwegian county's turn is why ski jumpers still lunge on landing.Telemark · Norway · From the placeWell attestedTennessee quick stepSoldiers named the war's biggest killer after the hurried walk it forced on them.Tennessee · United States · From the placeWell attestedtequilaThe spirit is a town in Jalisco.Tequila · Mexico · From its productWell attestedterbiumIts name is the middle syllables of a Swedish village, chopped out and given a Latin ending.Ytterby mine · Sweden · From the placeWell attestedTex-MexTex-Mex began life as a telegraphic abbreviation for a railroad company.Texas · United States · From the placeWell attestedTexas dipA curtsy so extreme it takes a state's name and weeks of rehearsal.Texas · United States · From the placeProbableTexas heart shotHunters named the shot after a state, and nobody agrees which joke about the state was meant.Texas · United States · From the placeDisputedTexas hold 'emThe Texas legislature voted on where the game was born.Texas · United States · From the placeProbableTexas mickeyA bottle named for Texas that is sold almost nowhere but Canada.Texas · United States · From the placeWell attestedTexas teaOil as a beverage: the joke reached America through a TV theme song.Texas · United States · From the placeProbableTexas toastIt exists because a bakery cut the slices too thick for the toaster.Texas · United States · From the placeProbableTexas-sizedTexas lost its size crown in 1959 and kept the adjective anyway.Texas · United States · From the placeWell attestedTexpatTexans abroad borrowed the vocabulary of expatriates, as though leaving the state were leaving the country.Texas · United States · IndirectWell attestedThai RidgebackA forward-growing stripe of hair links dogs in Thailand, Vietnam, and Africa.Thailand · Thailand · From the placeProbablethink of EnglandThe famous quotation has no verified source and may never have been said.England · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableThousand Island dressingThe dressing is named for an archipelago on the St Lawrence.Thousand Islands · Canada · From the placeWell attestedthree stops short of DagenhamThe joke only works if you know the District line: three stops before Dagenham is Barking.Barking · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedTijuana BibleThe booklets were printed in the northeastern United States, but the name blamed a Mexican border town.Tijuana · Mexico · From the placeWell attestedTimbuktuA real Malian city became English shorthand for the middle of nowhere.Timbuktu · Mali · From the placeWell attestedTokayThe dessert wine is named for a Hungarian town.Tokaj · Hungary · From its productWell attestedtonaliteAn Alpine pass gave its name to one of the commonest rock types in the continental crust.Tonale Pass · Italy · From the placeWell attestedTower of HanoiFrench puzzle, Vietnamese name, and a legend set in an Indian temple.Hanoi · Vietnam · From the placeProbabletripoliteEvery jeweler's tripoli buffing bar carries the name of a North African port.Tripoli · Libya · From the placeProbableTrojan horseEvery malicious program of this kind is named for one siege.Troy · Turkey · From the placeWell attestedtroy grainGold is weighed in units named for a market town in Champagne.Troyes · France · From the placeProbabletroy ounceGold is priced in an ounce named for a French market town, not ancient Troy.Troyes · France · From the placeProbabletroy poundA pound of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers.Troyes · France · From the placeProbabletularemiaThe disease is named for a county in California.Tulare County · United States · From the placeWell attestedturgiteA mineral that was unnamed twice: once for the species and once when X-rays showed it was a mixture.Krasnoturyinsk · Russia · From the placeProbableturkeyThe American bird is named for a country on the wrong continent.Turkey · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedTurkish delightThe sweet is named for the country that exported it.Turkey · Turkey · From its peopleWell attestedturquoiseThe gem is named for the country it was traded through, not where it formed.İstanbul · Turkey · Historical nameWell attestedtuxedoAmerican evening dress is named for a Hudson Valley club.Tuxedo Park · United States · From the placeWell attestedtweedThe cloth may be a river, or a misread word for twill.River Tweed · United Kingdom · DisputedDisputedTyrian purpleImperial purple is named for a Phoenician port.Tyre · Lebanon · From its productWell attestedTyrolean traverseA rope bridge named for the Alpine region whose guides made it routine.Tyrol · Austria · From its peopleProbableulsterThe overcoat is named for a province of Ireland.Ulster · Ireland · From its productWell attestedurfa biberDried in sun by day and wrapped by night, which is why it stays dark and moist.Şanlıurfa · Turkey · From its productWell attestedUtah curlsA hairstyle that got a state's name from the people describing it, not the people wearing it.Utah · United States · From the placeWell attestedvalley girlA father recorded his fourteen-year-old daughter imitating her classmates, and a suburb north of Hollywood ended up naming a manner of speech.San Fernando Valley · United States · From the placeWell attestedVauclusian springA whole class of springs named after one hole in Provence.Fontaine-de-Vaucluse · France · From the placeWell attestedveronalThe first barbiturate sleeping drug was named for Verona.Verona · Italy · From the placeProbablevichyssoiseThe cold soup is named for a French spa town.Vichy · France · From its peopleWell attestedVienna sausageIn Vienna the very same sausage is called a Frankfurter.Vienna · Austria · From the placeWell attestedviennoiserieA whole class of French pastry is labelled Viennese.Vienna · Austria · From its peopleWell attestedVietnamese sandwichIt is a French colonial baguette, lightened with rice flour.Vietnam · Vietnam · From its peopleWell attestedVirginia creeperNamed by Europeans for a colony far larger than today's Virginia.Virginia · United States · From the placeWell attestedvirginiumAn element named for Virginia that turned out never to have been detected at all.Virginia · United States · From the placeWell attestedwalk like an EgyptianThe pose copies a drawing convention: Egyptian artists showed head and legs in profile but the shoulders square to the viewer.Egypt · Egypt · From the placeWell attestedWarrington hammerThe thin end exists so you can start a pin without flattening your fingers.Warrington · United Kingdom · From the placeProbableWatergateThe suffix for every scandal since is a Washington office block.Watergate complex · United States · From the placeWell attestedWaterlooA crushing loss is named for a ridge south of Brussels.Waterloo · Belgium · From the placeWell attestedWelsh corgiCorgi is Welsh too: cor plus ci, meaning dwarf dog.Wales · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedWelsh rarebitThe dish is a joke at Wales's expense that outlived the joke.Wales · United Kingdom · From its peopleWell attestedWensleydaleThe cheese is named for a Yorkshire dale.Wensleydale · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedWest Nile feverThe virus is named for a district in Uganda it long ago outgrew.West Nile sub-region · Uganda · From the placeWell attestedWest Nile virusThe virus is named for a district in Uganda.West Nile · Uganda · From the placeWell attestedwhen in Rome, do as the Romans doThe advice started as a bishop's ruling on which day to fast.Rome · Italy · From the placeWell attestedWhetstoneFor two decades the standard measure of computer speed was named after a Leicestershire village.Whetstone · United Kingdom · IndirectWell attestedwienerThe sausage is named for Vienna, in German Wien.Vienna · Austria · From its peopleWell attestedWiener schnitzelThe cutlet is simply Viennese.Vienna · Austria · From its peopleWell attestedWinnebagoThe motorhome is named for an Iowa county.Winnebago County · United States · From the placeWell attestedWorcestershireThe pantry bottle is named for an English cathedral city.Worcester · Kingdom of England · From its productWell attestedWorcestershire sauceThe sauce is named for an English county.Worcester · United States · From its productWell attestedworstedThe suiting yarn is named for a Norfolk village.Worstead · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedwuhanic acidTwo new fatty acids were named after the two cities whose labs worked them out.Wuhan · People's Republic of China · From the placeWell attestedXanaduThe dream palace was a real Mongol capital.Shangdu · People's Republic of China · Historical nameWell attestedXavierOne of the most widespread Catholic first names is really a Navarrese village address.Javier · Spain · From the placeWell attestedYorkshire puddingThe pudding is named for an English county.Yorkshire · United Kingdom · From its productWell attestedytterbiumThe fourth element to be cut out of the same Swedish quarry's name, and the one that kept the most letters.Ytterby mine · Sweden · From the placeWell attestedyttriumOne small quarry outside Stockholm has four elements named directly after it.Ytterby mine · Sweden · From the placeWell attestedzarzuelaThe Spanish operetta is named for a royal hunting lodge.Palacio de la Zarzuela · Spain · From the placeWell attestedzeerustA joke dictionary handed out spare meanings to place names, and this one escaped into science fiction criticism.Zeerust · South Africa · From the placeWell attestedzwieseliteFrom a Bavarian Forest pegmatite mined for quartz, not for the phosphates that made it famous.Zwiesel · Germany · From the placeWell attested