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In an earlier thread (https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=357578
) there was a question on what else common objects or appliances be called. For instance If Samuel Langley's 'Aerodrome' would have been more successful, airplanes would now be called airdromes.

This got me thinking: There are a lot of weapons, appliances etc. that got their name from one famous first example. The Monitor and the Dreadnaught come to mind, as does the original Hoover vacuum cleaner. (I am given to understand that in some part of the English speaking world 'to hoover' is still used as a verb for to give a pass with a vacuum cleaner.)

Also where I grew up, in the local West-Flemish dialect every picture camera was called 'a kodak'. Like in "Hey, fancy new Kodak you got there. what is it? A Minolta or a Pentax"...

Then there was the kelvinator, which was an early name for a household refrigerator, even if NOT build by the Kelvinator Refrigeration Company. And I read somewhere that due to the success of the De Havilland DH60 Moth sportsplane, every light plane flying around in the England of the 1930's was called 'a moth', whether it was built by De Havilland or not. Finally there are jeeps (for off road vehicles), Jumbos (for large passenger planes) and still around the lassie-dog and scoobie-dog...

So here is my challenge: If some slight change occurred in history, which brand names could now be common household names for the products they represent.

There can be the obvious quirk in history, like if the Merrimac had beaten the Monitor at Hampton Roads, all armored gunboats would now be 'merrimacs' and John Kerry would have piloted a River Merrimac up and down the Mekong in 1968. Or it could just be a slight change, like Apple did a little better in the 80's and every personal computer would henceforth be called 'a mac'.

So what will it be: Everyone in Germany and Austria driving around in 'beetles' or 'volkswagens' ("The new Toyota Rav4: A beetle made for the road less traveled")? Everyone in America driving fords ("The new Toyota Rav4: A ford made for the road less traveled")? Would modern cell phones be droids, iphones or 'berries? ...or what about everything flying without a pilot being a predator plane?

Okay, I'm done ranting. your turn now...


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