History Main / OrphanedEtymology

* It's not clear whether ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'' takes place in a fictional world, or an alternate/future timeline of our world. If the former, then it's unclear why they have cowboy hats called "Stetsons"; in our world they're named after the man who designed several of the hat styles we associate with cowboys. It could be that this fictional world ''also'' had a person named Stetson who invented similar hats, but if so we never find out.

* Several WesternAnimation/TheDisneyAfternoon series such as ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'', ''WesternAnimation/TaleSpin'', and ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' are set in worlds occupied only by anthropomorphic animals with no humans [[note]]on Earth, at least[[/note]], yet characters still use words like "man", "woman", "men", and "humanity" and "anthropology" as often we do in our world. (Given how their worlds contain multiple sapient species, they would need one word to refer to all sapient life that doesn't refer to any one species.)

** In "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E14SuitedForSuccess Suited for Success]]", when Rarity is designing dresses for the other ponies, Fluttershy specifically requests French Haute Couture, despite being in a universe where France (presumably) doesn't exist. In addition, in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E6TheCutiePox The Cutie Pox]]", one of Apple Bloom's symptoms is a talent for speaking in French (and she even identifies it as "Français" in her dialogue). Applejack simply refers to it as "speaking Fancy".

* ''Anime/{{Bakugan}}'' has a lot of these. The fact that Bakugan are named with English etymologies (Dragonoid = dragon) can be easily forgiven. What's more conspicuous is that many of their attacks are named for real mythologies -- Spartan fire, Odin's shield, Mars' spear, etc. Where did the aliens learn the Eddas and Illiad?

** During the Lior arc, Ed recounts the story of Icarus (though not by name) to Rose, even though Greece also presumably doesn't exist in this world. [[spoiler: Since Xerxes seems to be a FantasyCounterpartCulture for Greece, maybe that's where the myth came from in the ''FMA'' world.]]

* ''Anime/TheMysteriousCitiesOfGold'': In Season 2, Zia asks a boy she meets in China if his pet panda is his "teddy bear". However, teddy bears were invented in the 20th Century, and named after Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, so a girl from the 1530s (the time period in which the events of the series take place) shouldn't be talking about them, much less using a word like "teddy".

* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': There are some [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Covenant]] units called Jackals. While they do look like humanoid jackals (and use stealthy tactics), there's still the obvious question of why an alien empire would name one of their units after an Earth animal, as the Jackals existed before they even discovered Earth. You can't even HandWave it as just being a codename the humans call them (since they, like the other species, ''do'' have a suitably alien "official" name), as in the later games you spend part of the time playing as the Arbiter (a Covenant alien) or otherwise hearing alien conversations in English, and all of the aliens call them Jackals as well. We're likely meant to assume that this is just TranslationConvention at work to call the aliens by names that players are more likely to recognize (since those official names are [[AllThereInTheManual only mentioned in outside material like the novels]]), much less ones the actors could actually speak (especially given Creator/{{Bungie}} already had [[VideoGame/{{Marathon}} an established track record with unpronounceable alien names]]).

** In both '' VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' and ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'', when you're shooting an enemy plane, they'll often say "my plane's being swiss cheesed" even though Switzerland does not exist in Strangereal, [[ConstructedWorld the setting of the games]]. Likewise, a plane in one mission of ''The Unsung War'' is also said to be "dutch rolling", and another has a character make mention of Burmese.

* ''VideoGame/BugFables'': The term "fishing" is used even though the characters are anthropomorphic bugs too small to easily catch most fish species, and worms are what are being "fished" for. This could be explained by TranslationConvention, as the first chapter says that the characters are actually speaking in a language called Bugnish. [[spoiler:Because of the ambiguously After the End setting, fish may even be extinct]].

* In ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' the Filthy Woman in the Valley of Defilement complains about Maiden Astraea, claiming that "All the men worship her like she's the Virgin Mary." ''Demon's Souls'' is not set on Earth and the primary religion is clearly not Christianity.

** One item you can find is a [[http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Blood-Soaked_Teddy_Bear Blood-Soaked Teddy Bear.]] While bears do exist in Thedas, Teddy Bears were named after [[UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt "Teddy" Roosevelt]].

** One item you gather in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' is "''sela petrae''", slightly altered Latin for "Peter's salt" - i.e., saltpeter or potassium nitrate, which it is. While the language is presumably the in-universe [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Tevinter]], the reference to a Peter doesn't fit because it's just a corruption of the original "nitre" from the Latin "''nitrum''".
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'': This is used a lot. It is even [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestV'', where the phrase "proud as [[Theatre/PunchAndJudy Punch]]" is used and the Hero's daughter wonders what Punch was proud about.
** Similar to the Ghysal Greens example below, the HP-restoring item Amor Seco Essence is named after the town of Amor from VideoGame/DragonQuestVI, yet it appears in later games which do not have an equivalent.

** Some games in the series have a sword called the Wo Dao (essentially a {{katana|sAreJustBetter}}). Wo Dao is Chinese for "Japanese Sword," which is a problem since neither Japan nor China are locations in the games. The [[FantasyCounterpartCulture closest equivalents]] to date are the [[{{Wutai}} clearly Eastern-inspired]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening Chon'sin]] and [[VideoGame/FireEmblemFates Hoshido (and Izumo)]]... and the Wo Dao doesn't even appear in those entries. Interestingly, this was not a case of {{Woolseyism}} as the original Japanese text reads "Wato", an archaic spelling of "Japanese Sword". Why Creator/IntelligentSystems didn't just outright call the Wo Dao a katana is anyone's guess.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'': A conversation in the third game between Lan and Mega Man has the former asking if the word "pronto" is English, and the latter saying that it's possibly derivied from the Spanish language. Both England and Spain do not exist in this world.

** On a similar note, one of the Protoss characters from the first game is called Fenix, and ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' introduces a new Protoss unit, the Phoenix. All of this without them ever having any contact with [[Myth/ClassicalMythology greek mythology]].

* ''{{VideoGame/Terraria}}'' has {{Molotov Cocktail}}s as a craftable weapon, the Uzi as a [[RandomlyDrops random drop]] and Pad Thai can be purchased from the traveling merchant. Vyacheslav Molotov, Thailand and Israel presumably do not exist in the world of ''Terraria''. All that is known about the world is that Sweden apparently does exist in it.

* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'', [[TheBigGuy Reyn]] occasionally refers to [[SidekickCreatureNuisance Riki]] as a "stupid furry volleyball" in post-battle chatter, calling back to when Shulk, Melia and Reyn served Riki as the ball [[DynamicEntry when they first met him.]] This despite volleyball being an American sport with no clear analogue on Bionis.
* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'', [[SirSwearsALot Eunie]] insults [[TheBigGuy Lanz]] by calling him a [[Franchise/TheMuppets "muppet"]] twice over the course of the game. While "muppet" is a common British insult in our world (meaning "idiot"), it's still derived from the puppets, and worth noting because most other cases of explicit language in the English dub (like [[PardonMyKlingon "spark," "snuff," and "mudder"]]) carefully {{avert|ed}} this trope by [[HoldYourHippogriffs referring only to things that exist in Kevesi/Agnian society]][[labelnote:*]]even to the exclusion of common real-world swears like "fuck" or "damn" because most Kevesi and Agnians are born from PeopleJars and have no concept of sex, family, or religion[[/labelnote]]. [[spoiler: And while Aionios [[EarthAllAlong does have a connection to our Earth]] (through [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2 Alrest]]), any cultural connection to ''Franchise/TheMuppets'' has probably been [[AfterTheEnd destroyed several times over]] by now.]]

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Ruby has crosses on her clothes to go with her PerkyGoth aesthetic, and her uncle Qrow wears a tilted cross for a necklace, but there's no sign of Christianity in the series' universe. In fact, every religion we've seen so far on Remnant has been polytheistic, [[spoiler: including the true one.]]

* In ''Series/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', when Deep Thought declares that the answer to "life, the universe and everything" is 42, one of its creators' descendents says to the other "we're going to get lynched, you know that?" The term is believed to have originated in the 18th Century, but the scene in question is the origin story of Earth itself, so it's billions of years prior to its real world usage in any case.

** Because of their [[BizarreAlienReproduction machine-based reproduction]], families and relatives [[HumansThroughAlienEyes are a foreign concept]] to most Gems. However, when a rutile gemstone grows forking apart and created [[ConjoinedTwins two individuals sharing part of their bodies]], they're still called "Rutile Twins". Apparently [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_twinning the geological use of the word "twin"]] is the ''only'' one most Gems know.

* In the Brazilian gaming community, completing a game is colloquially known as "Zerar o Jogo" (something like "Zeroing the Game"). This comes from the UsefulNotes/Atari2600 era and its several {{endless game}}s (such as ''VideoGame/RiverRaid''). Since those games lacked an official ending, many players considered that a game "ended" when their score reached the maximum reading and the game [[OverflowError reverted it all back to zero]], similar to an odometer rollover. Even after scores and endlessness fell out of fashion in game design, this expression persisted on and is still used in Brazil.