During Covid, the WHO skipped over the Greek letter “Xi” for a new Covid variant because it would have been called the Xi virus and then had unintentional political blowback.
In the UK, we don’t have Canola. The processed stuff just gets sold as ‘vegetable oil’, but the high-end cold pressed stuff is always sold as ‘Rapeseed Oil’. Everyone’s quite happy to talk about ‘fields of rape’ too, when the crop’s in season. Quite sets off my hayfever.
OB
Once upon a time a computer chip was called a CPU. Aa transistors continued to shrink, a point was reached where two or more copies of the CPU could be put on the original sized piece of silicon. But nobody wants to say that they have a 4 CPU CPU so now the individual CPUs on the chip are called “cores”.
Yes; this is known as a naming taboo
There is a village west of the town of Westminster VT. They called it Westminster West, rather than the conventional but confusing West Westminster.
And when the new pastor hits town, he’s the Westminster West minister? 
Hollywood Fla hd a street called Hood. Was it named after the confederate general. Perhaps. I recently noticed it is now called Hope St.
Nice change.
The noble title “Earl”. It is a cognate of the Scandinavian term “Jarl” and is considered the British equivalent of the Continental title “Count,” which is not used in the UK. Yet an Earl’s wife (or a female holder of an earldom in her own right) is a Countess. And the title ranking in the British peerage right under an Earl is a Viscount, not a Vice-Earl. So why aren’t Earls simply called Counts?
One theory I read is that, at the time when the title got established in the Middle Ages, “Count” would have sounded too much like “cunt,” so was eschewed in favor of “Earl”. No proof of this, but an interesting speculation.
There’s lots of these.
Lake Tahoe: Lake Lake (Washo language)
Lake Michigan: Lake Large Lake (Ojibwe)
Lake Ontario: Lake Great Lake (Huron) according to one story
Timor Leste: East East (Malay-Portuguese)
Laura Nyro’s real name is Nigro.
The Holy Roman Empire.
Not Holy or Roman or an Empire goes the old joke, if you are too young to get it.
I’ve seen boxes of “Cod Chunks” in the freezer at the store. I guess “Cod Pieces” weren’t as appetizing.
The current scandal around Thames Water hasn’t been referred to as “Water-gate” as far as I’ve seen.
A peanut is a pea. As you rightly say, its a legume - its not incorrect to grant the common name ‘pea’ to any member of that botanical family.
Chickpeas, cowpeas, sweet peas, sea peas are all different species. If it’s a legume and it has ‘pea’ in the name, then its a pea, because that’s all it takes.
Supposedly a lot of streets in London and othe large cities now named ‘grove street’ were formerly called ‘grope street’, or worse.
My son had a Sgt. Sargent in boot camp. No one dared snicker. Apparently, he didn’t take the joke well.
Harry Baals was a good man. Some even say great.
So why did everybody get so upset when it was proposed to name the government center after him?
Stool Bus Septic in Utah.