Gramer Girl here. I'm In Jan Fogarty, and today we're talking about toponyms, and then we'll figure out when to use the two spellings of the word principle.

This first segment is by Karen Lundy.

Did you know the last time you pulled on a pair of jeans, you were putting on clothing named after a city in the south of France?

Denham seems like an American staple, but if you peel back the etymology, it's actually a linguistic shortcut for the French phrase Sergei denim, meaning literally serge, a sturdy twill fabric, from the city of neem.

The word denim is a kind of toponym. At its core, a toponym is anyplace name. The word comes from

Greek topos, meaning place. You hear it in words like topography, and onoma means name,

and you hear that in words like anonymous and synonym. Some toponyms evolve into common nouns like

denim did, and when they do, some linguists would argue that they also become eponyms.

These are common nouns derived from proper nouns.

Usually, we think of eponyms as common nouns that originated with people.

A good example of that is Sandwich, which was named for the Earl of Sandwich.

But for simplicity's sake here, we'll stick with calling

these words toponyms, or maybe even secret toponyms. They're the kind that are hidden in

plain sight. Words you probably didn't realize were named for places. If you're deeply into fashion,

you may know that the world of clothing and fabric has spun

off, pun intended, lots of toponyms.

So here are a few of those.

Well, denim comes from France.

The word jeans comes from the Italian city of Genoa.

The French word for Genoa is Jena, which is how the sturdy cotton trousers worn by Genoese sailors got their name.

That heavy canvas duffel bag you've hauled through the airport is named after the town of Duffel in Belgium,

which was famous in the 17th century for producing the thick, coarse wool and cloth

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