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Caelinus t1_iz172do wrote

Reply to comment by toxicatedscientist in Did sheep fur always just endlessly grow or was that something that was selectively bred? Were they originally naturally adapted to be going through a lot of foliage and thickets and stuff that would keep their coat relatively trimmed? by EuroTraschBozos

Panera means "Bread Basket," so Panera Bread is "Bread Basket Bread" which is a silly name.

Unrelated, but the funniest company name to me is still Schlecht Construction as Schlecht is one of the German words for "bad" in the objective sense. (as opposed to "feeling bad.")

So the name of the company is "Bad Construction" or just as accurately "Unskilled Construction" or "Bad Quality Construction." I know that it is probably just a last name, but it makes me laugh every time I see their logo.

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vesuvisian t1_iz30zc8 wrote

Panera Bread could be justified as meaning “bread from the bread basket.”

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Caelinus t1_iz33ck7 wrote

It can be parsed that way in English, but essentially no one would form and use that sentence. The only way it would work is if the "breadbasket" in some way did something special to bread aside from containing it. So it would be possible say that the store is called "Breadbasket" and it serves bread from itself, but then its name would just be Panera.

To use that construction with its actual name being "Panera Bread" you would need to call it Panera Bread Bread, or Breadbasket Bread Bread.

To me it seems pretty clear that they wanted to name themselves Panera after changing their name from Au Bon Pain, and realized that they might have marketing issues as most people would not immediately know what either of those names meant. So they just tacked bread on the end of their new name to make it obvious what their specialty was.

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