hey Vsauce Michael here I'm sorry look I
didn't name myself but apparently
Michael is the ninth most disliked baby
name for a boy according to a survey by
baby named wizard calm at least it
didn't top the charts like the rhyming
Aiden names
Jaden Braden Aiden the most disliked
name for a baby girl by the way was
Nevaeh heaven backwards names can be
more than just controversial they can
also be just plain wrong or misleading
misnomers and I'm not talking about the
daughter of mr. Nomar over the summer I
went to Singapore and I saw many many
things I saw an infinity pool the
world's largest column 'lest glass house
beautiful beautiful orchids including
the laboratories where scientists
genetically designed custom orchids and
very very humid air that condensed all
over my cool glasses
but even after I cleaned my glasses off
I didn't see any lions in fact it's
believed that no Lions have ever
naturally lived in Singapore even though
Singapore comes from a male a word for
Lions City it's believed that in 1299
when sang nila otama named singapore he
mistakenly thought that a tiger he saw
was a lion it's a misnomer but here is
the biggest mystery of them all did I
really go to Singapore I mean look at
these photos that guy certainly looks
like me but he's not exact
like me I have made a video about
misnomers and that guy hasn't this photo
is from May and since May I have been to
Australia New Zealand the guy in these
photos has never been there
I am similar to that guy but he's not
exactly me we can resolve this problem
by realizing that oranges are apples you
see in Old English the word Apple was
used to describe apples but also any
fruit in general for instance dates were
finger apples and bananas were apples of
paradise cucumbers were earth apples in
French the word for apple acted
similarly giving us earth apple for the
potato in the Middle Ages the old French
word for orange meant apple of the
orange tree and the Swedish word for
orange still means apple from China
because oranges originated in the east
but this leads us to an even bigger
question what came first orange the
fruit or orange the color well the
answer is neither the tree came first
the word orange comes from the sanskrit
word for the tree that these fruits grow
on before being introduced to these
fruits the english-speaking world called
this color not orange but yellow red the
first recorded use of the word orange to
refer to the color instead of the fruit
wasn't until 1512 so the color was named
after the fruit which was named after
the tree that it came from
but what's a fruit well botanically a
fruit is a part of a flowering plant
that disseminates seeds like an apple or
an orange or a lemon or a grape in
cooking because they're not sweet we
tend to call things like wheat grains
and bean pods vegetables even though
they are actually fruits vegetable is a
culinary term for other edible parts of
a plant that aren't fruit like roots or
leaves corn on the cob
tastes like a vegetable but
scientifically corn kernels are fruits
which means that corn on the cob is
really just a bunch of fruits packed
together one of the veggies we put on
our pizza is the mushroom of course
mushrooms aren't really vegetables
because they aren't even plants they're
fungi names can also be confusing
because of stigler's law our tendency to
name things not after who discovered
them or originated them but instead to
simply honor someone else then diagrams
are cool they were named after John Venn
in the 1880s
although Leonardo Euler actually
introduced them in 1768 and Avogadro's
constant not actually discovered by
Avogadro he proposed that such a number
could exist but it was a different guy
who discovered the exact figure
straight-up misnomers are my favorite
french horns are not French your funny
bone is not a bone it's a nerve the
older nerve and this is not Big Ben
nothing about this is officially called
Big Ben it's real name is
the Elizabeth tower people often say
that the Bell inside is named Big Ben
but even that's not true the main Bell
inside Elizabeth tower is officially
called the great Bell the great bells
nickname is Big Ben and we have since
applied that nickname for a bell to the
entire tower kosher salt isn't actually
kosher it's just used to make things
kosher to draw blood out of meat so
really it should be called kosher een
salt the Rocky Mountain oyster of course
is not seafood it's a fried bull
testicle Arabic numerals are not Arabic
they were invented in India but
introduced to Europe by Arab
mathematicians Halley's Comet is named
after Edmund Halley but had been
witnessed by people at least as early as
240 BC peanuts are not nuts they're
legumes and coconuts are not nuts
they're droops stone fruit like cherries
apricots peaches etc french fries as
they are especially known in America are
not from America but were probably named
by British and American soldiers during
the first world war who discovered them
where they were likely invented Belgium
now since French was the official
language of the Belgian Army the
soldiers may have mistakenly thought
they were in France koala bears are not
bears they just kind of look like they
are and egg plants don't grow eggs 18th
century cultivators simply thought they
kind of resembled pigs dry cleaning
isn't dry at all it involves lots of wet
liquids but just not water and silly guy
hamburgers are not named after ham the
pork product they're named after Hamburg
Germany probably because of Hamburg
citizens who immigrated to the US and
brought their minced beef patty a
Hamburg steak with them guinea pigs are
not pigs at all they're just similar
looking to pigs kind of and Greenland
isn't Greenland at all it's believed
that about a thousand years ago Eric the
Red
named it Greenland hoping that the name
would trick settlers into coming over we
drive on parkways and park on driveways
not because word makers want to confuse
us but because the park in parkways
refers not to stopping a car but to the
nature parks parkways often run along
skeuomorph our design elements that
today are merely ornamental even though
in the past originally they had a
purpose for instance on a modern mobile
phone the icon for phone call is shaped
like an old phone the icon for email is
shaped like an old snail mail envelope
or when you take a camera phone picture
you hear the sound of a mechanical
shutter even if your phone doesn't have
one that makes that noise older cameras
did so the new ones do too it's a
skeuomorph
your own name is a kind of skeuomorph
let's call it a skew Oh nom it was
necessary at Birth your parents gave it
to you but before they knew exactly what
you would be like when you grew up
you have changed since you were born but
your name has stayed the same
when we called it the moon we didn't
know that we would find other moons in
the solar system when you were named no
one knew how you would change or what
you would become and you change
frequently you changed many many times
over the course of your life you learn
things you forget things you meet people
you stop talking to people you
experience things for the first time at
a cellular level millions of times the
second you change costume cells die and
new ones are born
and at the atomic level with the
exception of nonliving things like
tattoos and piercings every five years
pretty much every single atom in your
body is replaced so to what degree is
the future or past
you really you now Robert M Martin puts
this in a really cool perspective in his
book there are two errors in the title
of this book that person who will have
your name in the very far future will be
connected only very tenuously to the
present you the person will remember
very few of your current experiences
will be psychologically quite different
will have a body that resembles your
present one only a bit and contains
almost none of the same matter so it
seems that this person is the future you
only to a small degree in a way in terms
of memories and experiences and history
you have more in common with a stranger
today than you do with yourself ten or
twenty years ago Martin goes even
further saying why be afraid of death if
the future you who dies will resemble
you today so little well to that I say
Yolo well it's probably more accurate to
say Yolo bluml mitosis vertical wiki oh
boy oh don t oh boy Todd you only live
once but living once means living many
times as a series of similar but
technically different people who know
each other but only in one direction and
who can help each other but only in the
other direction
and as always thanks for watching