Ore-Ida potatoes, found in your local grocery store, derive their name from a shortening of "Oregon-Idaho".
This is interesting to me first because this puts Ore-Ida in direct competition with Maine potatoes. Also, I've insisted for years on calling them "Orr-EYE-Dah", which is now clearly wrong. However, this also means that most people I know are wrong on their pronunciation. While typically I hear "Orr-AY-EE-Duh", it is cleary "Orr-UH-EE-Duh" based on the way one pronounces "Oregon".
This theory is confrmed on the official web site however I still find it suspect that in the address the name still has no hyphen.
How did I find all this valuable information? By reading Dwight K. Schrute's blog. Is this post a cheap attempt to put a link to Dwight K. Schrute's blog in my own? Yes, obviously.
3 comments:
Nice. Following the theme of company name etymology, recently I stopped by Chelsea Market in Manhattan for the first time. While the renovated factory now serves as a boutique food market and the home of the Food Network, the building previously was an Oreo cookie factory belonging to the National Biscuit Company or better known as, you guessed it, Nabisco!
A bit of useless information to fill otherwise unused brain space on a Friday afternoon.
Where does Oreo come from?
This is a pretty good list of this type of thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_name_etymologies
"Oreo," though, seems to be a mystery for the ages.
Post a Comment