Every now and again (read: "never") someone wonders why a piece of furniture and an empire share the name "ottoman". Luckily for you I happen to have found (read: "made up") the answer.

The story starts in the 1300s in Turkey (motto: "hey, we could have been called Chicken"). The ruling emperor of the land created a "guys hangout" for himself and his important officials. This was one of those wood paneled affairs with the pool table, brandy snifters, dead animal heads on the walls. Each man was allowed to bring in his own chair.

Shortly after the "I've got a better chair than you" wars ended, someone decided to up the ante by bringing in an ottoman (Turkish for "I can't remember how to spell hassock") for his chair. Naturally everybody had to have his own ottoman. Before long the entire club was filled with ottomans. It was so bad you couldn't take three steps without tripping over one.

One day in mock exasperation the emperor muttered, "Geez, it's like an Ottoman Empire in here." Soon everybody referred to the club as the "Ottoman Empire".

Near the end of an unusually long trip to India the emperor remarked that he was looking forward to returning to his "Ottoman Empire". Not wanting the emperor to think they didn't notice he had changed the name of his country, everybody started calling his country the Ottoman Empire. The emperor briefly thought of correcting this misnomer, but then he figured it would stop the "turkey" jokes so he left it alone.

Next time: how a plate production war and "china as far as the eye can see" renamed an Asian country.

© Mike Gurak
photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash