Our First Million

Our Why Name It That counter of visits clicked over the one million mark at the end of June!  That is an achievement for this little blog.  That came after over a decade and over 500 posts, so sticking to it gets some credit.

My first post was about the origin of this blog. It began as a student project by my then-young son and was something I picked up and converted into a blog a few years later. The idea was to answer the question posed in Romeo and Juliet - "What's in a name?"

It turns out there's a lot in a name, and so I look at why something has the name it does. That led us to find origins for curious names of bands, product names, people names, place names, titles, sports teams and really the origins of any words and phrases that catch my interest.

Early posts were about the name origins of rock bands (a category that remains the most popular posts here). I was working off an alphabetical list of topics at first, so I posted about 38 Special, ABBA, AC/DC and others.

I also started posting about names in sports, including my favorite team, the New York Yankees, and some eponyms found in the world of figure skating.

I started on some place names beginning with Alaska and Alabama but then moving not only through the United States but out into the wider world.

Words and phrases are a big part of the site. The first curiosity was that # symbol known by several names including as the pound sign.

If you're one of our regular visitors, thanks for putting us past 1,000,000. If you're a first time visitor, I hope you'll explore the site via the search bar or by categories or by just scrolling through the latest posts and clicking links.

There is a contact widget on the site if you have questions or want to suggest a name for us to include or have problems with the site. In looking at the older posts, I have discovered how many of the archived posts have broken images and links. We're working on it...

Bite the Bullet

The expression "Bite the Bullet” used today means to go through the pain (physical or mental) and get on with it. 

In the 19th century, it could literally mean to bite a bullet. At the time, there was no such thing as pain relief or anesthesia when soldiers were injured on the battlefield and needed surgery, including amputations. They might be given an alcoholic drink but they were given a bullet to bite down on to prevent them from screaming out loud.

Of course, it didn't need to be a bullet - a piece of wood or leather strap would work too - but bullets were readily available. 

"Biting the bullet" is a metaphor used to describe a situation, often a debate, where one accepts an inevitable impending hardship or hard-to-refute point, and then endures the resulting pain with fortitude.

The phrase "bite on the bullet"That was first recorded by Rudyard Kipling in his 1891 novel The Light That Failed.

Evidence for biting an actual bullet rather than something perhaps safer and less likely to be swallowed is sparse. It is said that Harriet Tubman related having once assisted in a Civil War amputation in which the patient was given a bullet to bite down on.

Another origin story is that it evolved from the British expression "to bite the cartridge", which dates to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but the phrase "chew a bullet", with a similar meaning, dates to at least 1796.

Modern audiences need to recognize that in the era of the origin of this phrase bullets were typically made of lead, a very soft metal, and would have been independent of any charge or cartridge.

Humble Pie

“Eating Humble Pie” is an expression that means to be submissive or apologetic. Its origin goes as far back as the 17th century. The lord of an estate would give the umbles (the less tasty parts of an animal) to his servants. "Umbles" in Middle English was derived from the word numble (after the Middle French nombles), meaning "deer's innards." Typically, they were made into a pie. This became associated with a lower social status.

I knew the phrase more as the name of a rock band.

1970 album

Humble Pie is an English rock band formed by singer-guitarists Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott in 1969. Often regarded as one of the first supergroups in music, Humble Pie experienced moderate popularity and commercial success during the 1970s with hit songs such as "Black Coffee", "30 Days in the Hole", "I Don't Need No Doctor", "Hot 'n' Nasty" and "Natural Born Bugie" among others.

The original line-up of members featured lead singer/frontman and guitarist Steve Marriott of Small Faces, singer-guitarist Peter Frampton of the Herd, former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley from the Apostolic Intervention.

Having been instantly labeled by the UK music press as a supergroup, the band chose Humble Pie in order to downplay such expectations.

Their debut album, As Safe as Yesterday Is, was released in August 1969, along with the single, "Natural Born Bugie"/"Wrist Job", which reached No. 4 hit in the UK Singles Chart. It is one of the first albums to be described by the term "heavy metal" in a 1970 review in Rolling Stone magazine. I always thought of them as being more "hard rock" than metal, but I'm not a critic. 

On 9 July 1971 Humble Pie opened for Grand Funk Railroad at their historic Shea Stadium concert, an event that broke the Beatles record for fastest-selling stadium concert, to that date. 

That year, Humble Pie released their most successful record to date, Rock On, as well as a live album recorded at the Fillmore East in New York entitled Performance Rockin' the Fillmore. The live album was certified gold by the RIAA. "I Don't Need No Doctor" became an FM radio standard in the US, peaking at No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelling the album up the charts. 

By the time of the album's release, Peter Frampton had left the band and went on to considerable success as a solo artist. His live recording Frampton Comes Alive! (1976), had several hit singles, and has earned 8× Platinum by the RIAA in the United States.

The band went through many lineup changes. Steve Marriott died in a house fire in 1991. The band continued to tour and record and during 2018 Jerry Shirley (who still owned the Humble Pie name) created a new lineup that he would direct but not tour with and as of 2023 Shirley's "Humble Pie Legacy" lineup of Dave Colwell (guitar), Jim Stapley (vocals, guitar, Hammond, harmonica), Ivan Bodley (bass) and Bobby Marks (drums) were still actively touring.