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Comment by davycro | Hacker News Reader

Adidas = Adi Dassler

This doesn't belong in the category, since it's obviously a name. If it were called "Running Shoes" because the company founder was named "Running", then it would belong..

It wasn't obviously a name to me. Next you'll say Nike is a name!

What's "Adidas" to you then? the examples show nouns or adjectives that turn out to be the inventor's name (like PageRank, you think it's from "web pages", but oh, it's from "Larry Page", or "Main Street", where you think it's because it's the primary street, but oh, it's actually named after a Mr. Main).

So what noun or adjective is "Adidas"?

I'm going to complain about being downvoted and I'm gonna grumpily say even HN isn't immune to anti-intellectualism...

I had thought both Adidas and Nike were made up words, like Kodak.

Not sure if you were trying to make a joke, but Nike is the Greek goddess of victory.

What a coincidence!

It doesn't belong in the same way that Debian doesn't.

The good ones in the list are good because they are not obviously a name of a person, the name of the thing makes sense independently to it being named after a person.

"Lake Mountain" could easily be named that because it is a mountain with a lake, so it is interesting that Lake Mountain is named after someone named Lake; Adidas and Debian are unexpected simply because they don't look like the name of a person, or anything else!

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