Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderI find this post and comments to be surprisingly delightful. I'll aggregate the scattered gems in the comments here: - Sideburns : Named after the American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside. - Heaviside function (a mathematical step function) : named after Oliver Heaviside - The Children's python (animal) : Named after John George Children. - Snowflake, AZ : Named after Erastus Snow and William Jordon Flake. - Lake Mountain, Victoria : No lake. Named after George Lake, who was the…
The generic Hungarian word for trash cans, 'kuka', unexpectedly originates from the names of German industrialists Johann Josef Keller and Jakob Knappich. The story is quite involved, to the extent that one would be tempted to dismiss it as a folk etymology, if it wasn't ridiculously well-attested. Keller and Knappich founded an acetylene factory in Augsburg, Bavaria in 1898. They named it Keller und Knappich Augsburg (KUKA). Their venture quickly expanded into manufacturing of welding equipment, household…
A few I found particularly surprising: - PageRank (Larry Page) - Debian (two people named Deb and Ian) - German chocolate cake (Samuel German) Would also love to learn about more of these!
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 793
- Total comments
- 624
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-07-19 | Things Unexpectedly Named After PeopleFirst breakout · Best thread | vortex_ape | 433 | 289 |
| 2024-02-15 | Things Unexpectedly Named After People | vghaisas | 4 | 1 |
| 2024-02-19 | Things Unexpectedly Named After People (2020) | zdw | 2 | 1 |
| 2024-02-22 | Things unexpectedly named after people (2020)Latest 20+ point return | prawn | 354 | 333 |