Talk:Misnomer/Archives/2012/May

There's a lot of pretty ridiculous stuff here
I made some edits. "Magpie" etymologically has nothing to do with pies. Not a misnomer. Was this a joke? Coca Cola does still contain coca (albeit decocainized) and cola. Just because people in India never called themselves Indians does not mean this is a misnomer. It's an exonym. The Deutsch may not call themselves German, but that doesn't mean German is a misnomer. Exonyms certainly can be considered insensitive, with autonyms being preferable, but that doesn't make them misnomers.

The list of bands is way over the top. I didn't edit it much; I don't know the Alan Parsons project, but since the text I took out listed Alan Parsons as a founding member, I don't see how this is a misnomer. I think there probably are a substantial number of people who think that somebody named Jethro Tull or Pink Floyd is actually a member of the respective groups. Really though, there are literally thousands of band names that should not be taken literally. None of the Presidents of the United States of America ever held that office. Black Francis and Kim Deal are not actually elves/fairies. Contrary to popular belief, not one emaciated dog can be counted among the members of Skinny Puppy.

Noting the question above about strict misnomers vs. misunderstood terms, Canary Islands and Scotland Yard are not misnomers.

There's a lot of garbage in here. Eggplant? Arguing that a cartoon character is 3-dimensional and thus not a square (Spongebob may be more of a rectangle than a square, but he only exists in a 2-D medium)? Detroit Pistons play in a suburb of Detroit (using the name of the largest city in a metro area to include suburbs is addressed elsewhere in the article)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.104.39.2 (talk) 21:28, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Alan Parsons was a founding member of The Alan Parsons Project, but he wasn't the founder; that was Eric Woolfson. Parsons and Woolfson agreed between them that although the group was strictly speaking "The Eric Woolfson Project", somehow "The Alan Parsons Project" sounds better.  Hence this is indeed a misnomer. — 188.29.241.246 (talk) 04:27, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it's not a misnomer. Bands can name themselves anything they want. When The Beatles were called The Silver Beetles, the fact that no insects were in the band did not make the name a misnomer. Cresix (talk) 15:39, 18 May 2012 (UTC)