Former names you use without meaning to

[MikeTheActuary]

1995hoo reminded me of another one.  I still call Reagan Airport, National Airport, unless I'm thinking about it.  I bet Reagan would be unhappy to be memorialized in a facility serving DC.

Agreed.

And, FWIW, BWI will always be BWI to me, just as Hartsfield is Hartsfield.

I also still have a habit of referring to Sam Cooper Blvd. as "I-40, aborted", but I think the latter name was unique within my household.  But surely I can't be the only person with ties to Memphis who still slips and refers to "Memphis State" and "Southwestern" instead of "University of Memphis" and "Rhodes".

[texaskdog]

Town Lake in Austin...no one calls it Lady Bird Lake.  I live in Texas and pop is still pop.

[Rothman]

1995hoo reminded me of another one.  I still call Reagan Airport, National Airport, unless I'm thinking about it.  I bet Reagan would be unhappy to be memorialized in a facility serving DC.

I lived in the DC area around the time of the switch.  There was a lot of grumbling about it: "It will always be National!"

[1995hoo]

BWI used to be Friendship Airport. Don't know of anyone who still calls it that.

[tckma]

Here is an incomplete list of things I have to make a conscious effort to call by their current names:

The Worcester Centrum.
Harbor Lights (in Boston).
The Garden State Arts Center
Giants Stadium
====
Interboro Parkway
(Massachusetts) Route 128
(Maryland) Route 94 (north of I-70 to MD-26)

[tckma]

New York's JFK Airport was once known as Idlewild Airport.  I haven't heard ANYONE call it that, ever.

Actually, airports seem to do this a lot.  Chicago O'Hare gets its ORD call sign from its original name of ORcharD Field.  Orlando Airport, similarly, gets MCO from McCOy Field.

[busman_49]

The Cleveland Indians' stadium will always be Jacob's Field to me (as opposed to its current moniker, Progressive Field).  For that matter, The "Q" will always be the Gund Arena for me.

[1995hoo]

Two guys near me at work are talking about WWE. I seldom think if that, but if I do, I still think of it as the WWF.

[GaryV]

New York's JFK Airport was once known as Idlewild Airport.  I haven't heard ANYONE call it that, ever.

Not even before 1963?   

[SignGeek101]

I live in Texas and pop is still pop.

As in the drink? I thought 'pop' was a Canadian term.

Just looked it up, and I was wrong. Wouldn't be the first time 

[Big John]

^^ I thought they called it "Coke" regardless of type or brand down there.

[Max Rockatansky]

^^ I thought they called it "Coke" regardless of type or brand down there.

I find it amusing that there is data for virtually every county in the country including rural Nevada and Alaska.  Does that say more about the priorities of the survey takers or people taking the survey?  I usually switch between pop or soda without realizing it.

[jwolfer]

^^ I thought they called it "Coke" regardless of type or brand down there.

I find it interesting that Milwaukee and St Louis are soda islands in pop-land

[tckma]

New York's JFK Airport was once known as Idlewild Airport.  I haven't heard ANYONE call it that, ever.

Not even before 1963?   

Considering I was born in 1978, no.

[kkt]

New York's JFK Airport was once known as Idlewild Airport.  I haven't heard ANYONE call it that, ever.

Not even before 1963?   

Considering I was born in 1978, no.

I've heard the name Idlewild in an old movie, I'm trying to remember which one.

The Idlewild to JFK name change seems to have caught on more quickly than Reagan.  Maybe it helps to be a martyr.

[wolfiefrick]

In St. Louis, locals refer to I-64 as 'Highway 40'. I understand that US 40 is still a designation for I-64, but the inclusion of US 40 in the name just seems a bit redundant and the I-64 designation has been around for well over fifteen years, and thus I usually refer to it as simply '64', much to my parents' immense confusion.

Strangely, for reasons I can't fathom, locals don't refer to I-44 west of I-270 as 'Highway 50'. Likely because the I-44 designation has been around for far longer than the I-64 designation west of the state line.

[SP Cook]

I flew into ATL (on Delta, which ATL is their hometown) on Monday and the stewardess welcomed me to "Hartsfield".   Delta has always been politically correct about just saying "Atlanta" or "Hartsfield-Jackson" for decades. 

In any event. I never say the name of an airport other than just the city or the three letter code, unless more is needed due to the city having multiple airports, such as Reagan-Dulles, or JFK-LaGuardia.

Around WV, I, and most everybody else, still call the Huntington Civic Center that, not its later name of Huntington Civic Arena nor the corporate Big Sandy Superstore Arena (Big Sandy is a chain of easy credit for cheap product furniture stores) ;  WVU's football stadium is Mountaineer Field not Mylan Puscar Stadium (Puscar was founder of an ethically challenged generic drug company based nearby) ; the soon to close WV Tech as that and not WVU Tech, which the state renamed it trying to save it from closure; the CRW airport is just "Charleston" (or Charley West in airport lingo) and not "Yeager" ;  and of course nothing named for the late Senator/Grand Kleagle is called that, just whatever the underlaying name is, such as US 119.

[1995hoo]

1995hoo reminded me of another one.  I still call Reagan Airport, National Airport, unless I'm thinking about it.  I bet Reagan would be unhappy to be memorialized in a facility serving DC.

I lived in the DC area around the time of the switch.  There was a lot of grumbling about it: "It will always be National!"

"National" was never the airport's name to begin with, from a technical standpoint. The airport's name was "Washington Airport" and the word "National" was part of it in the same way the word "International" is part of many others' names. In this case, "National" simply denotes an airport that does not have a Customs facility to process commercial flights (thus, inbound commercial flights from foreign airports are limited to places with preclearance). In this instance, it doesn't mean "the nation's airport" or the like. I think a lot of people assume it does mean that, sort of like the National Zoo or the National Air and Space Museum.

But, of course, people in the DC area wouldn't reasonably be expected to call their own airport "Washington Airport." While I'm too young to remember, I've always figured locally it was probably just called "the airport" prior to Dulles opening. Only after Dulles opened was it really necessary to distinguish, and the word "National" was all there was to differentiate. (There used to be a number of smaller airports in the suburbs, such as Washington—Virginia Airport near Bailey's Crossroads, but they were small operations not comparable to DCA.)

[Rothman]

1995hoo reminded me of another one.  I still call Reagan Airport, National Airport, unless I'm thinking about it.  I bet Reagan would be unhappy to be memorialized in a facility serving DC.

I lived in the DC area around the time of the switch.  There was a lot of grumbling about it: "It will always be National!"

"National" was never the airport's name to begin with, from a technical standpoint. The airport's name was "Washington Airport" and the word "National" was part of it in the same way the word "International" is part of many others' names. In this case, "National" simply denotes an airport that does not have a Customs facility to process commercial flights (thus, inbound commercial flights from foreign airports are limited to places with preclearance). In this instance, it doesn't mean "the nation's airport" or the like. I think a lot of people assume it does mean that, sort of like the National Zoo or the National Air and Space Museum.

But, of course, people in the DC area wouldn't reasonably be expected to call their own airport "Washington Airport." While I'm too young to remember, I've always figured locally it was probably just called "the airport" prior to Dulles opening. Only after Dulles opened was it really necessary to distinguish, and the word "National" was all there was to differentiate. (There used to be a number of smaller airports in the suburbs, such as Washington—Virginia Airport near Bailey's Crossroads, but they were small operations not comparable to DCA.)

Interesting use of the name "National Airport" recounted here.

[kkt]

"National" was never the airport's name to begin with, from a technical standpoint. The airport's name was "Washington Airport" and the word "National" was part of it in the same way the word "International" is part of many others' names. In this case, "National" simply denotes an airport that does not have a Customs facility to process commercial flights (thus, inbound commercial flights from foreign airports are limited to places with preclearance). In this instance, it doesn't mean "the nation's airport" or the like. I think a lot of people assume it does mean that, sort of like the National Zoo or the National Air and Space Museum.

But, of course, people in the DC area wouldn't reasonably be expected to call their own airport "Washington Airport." While I'm too young to remember, I've always figured locally it was probably just called "the airport" prior to Dulles opening. Only after Dulles opened was it really necessary to distinguish, and the word "National" was all there was to differentiate. (There used to be a number of smaller airports in the suburbs, such as Washington—Virginia Airport near Bailey's Crossroads, but they were small operations not comparable to DCA.)

The sign on the front of the terminal building under construction in the 1940s says Washington National Airport...

http://www.flyreagan.com/sites/default/files/14._then_terminal_a_under_construction_1940s.jpg

[noelbotevera]

I refuse to call Dulles Airport by the '84 change (or probably 1983) the Washington Dulles International Airport and call it simply Dulles Airport or Dulles International Airport.

[jp the roadgeek]

Every once in a while I'll hear Bradley (International) Airport referred to by its old name Bradley Field.  And most people call Newark-Liberty airport just plain Newark Airport. I've heard JFK referred to as Idlewild in Goodfellas, and in Mad Men (both taking place in the '60's)

[1995hoo]

"National" was never the airport's name to begin with, from a technical standpoint. The airport's name was "Washington Airport" and the word "National" was part of it in the same way the word "International" is part of many others' names. In this case, "National" simply denotes an airport that does not have a Customs facility to process commercial flights (thus, inbound commercial flights from foreign airports are limited to places with preclearance). In this instance, it doesn't mean "the nation's airport" or the like. I think a lot of people assume it does mean that, sort of like the National Zoo or the National Air and Space Museum.

But, of course, people in the DC area wouldn't reasonably be expected to call their own airport "Washington Airport." While I'm too young to remember, I've always figured locally it was probably just called "the airport" prior to Dulles opening. Only after Dulles opened was it really necessary to distinguish, and the word "National" was all there was to differentiate. (There used to be a number of smaller airports in the suburbs, such as Washington—Virginia Airport near Bailey's Crossroads, but they were small operations not comparable to DCA.)

The sign on the front of the terminal building under construction in the 1940s says Washington National Airport...

http://www.flyreagan.com/sites/default/files/14._then_terminal_a_under_construction_1940s.jpg

How does that disagree with anything I said?

[Rothman]

Makes me wonder when National Airport started accepting international flights, then.  Seems to me that, by 1995hoo's logic, every airport that only accepted domestic flights would have been called a "national" airport.

[1995hoo]

Makes me wonder when National Airport started accepting international flights, then.  Seems to me that, by 1995hoo's logic, every airport that only accepted domestic flights would have been called a "national" airport.

Technically they're not international flights. The only flights into Reagan from foreign cities (such as Nassau, Montreal, or Toronto, among others) are from cities where the passengers pre-clear US Customs and Immigration in the other city before boarding the flight. The flight is then treated, for legal purposes, as a domestic flight. Flights to Reagan are not, of course, the only ones that have this. I know there are preclearance facilities in Vancouver and in Shannon, to name two cities with no service to DCA. Don't know about elsewhere.