The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

Only some Belgians are Flemish (like only some British people are Welsch).

The Netherlands is the official name in English, not Holland.

The answer is probably that language is arbitrary, to some level. There isn't some English committee somewhere, deciding what words are right to say. Rather, it starts as colloquial, spoken English and then, when it's common enough, gets formalized and deemed "proper".

I was thinking about this one when I was at the supermarket yesterday -- some meats are named after the animal. Some have their own name.

cow - beef
calf - veal
pig - pork
sheep - mutton

lamb - lamb
goat - goat
chicken - chicken
turkey - turkey

That shit's mad arbitrary too; I mean there's no logical reason why we say "lamb chops" and "pork chops" (instead of "pig chops").
 

Joe-

But then we'd have spaghetti and cowballs.
 

Joe--

There's a pretty simple explanation for the differences in meat/animal names...The Norman Invasion of 1066.

After the invasion, French was introduced to the English language though it was spoken mainly by nobility and educated folks. In other words, the peasants were saying "chicken" and the more educated people were using the French-derived "poultry." Same with “cow” and “beef.”

This is also why we have choppy phrasal verbs in English and more sophisticated counterparts. The choppy ones come from German, the more sophisticated ones from French.
eg:
"to get" vs. "receive"
"to put out" vs. "extinguish"

Also, language is less arbitrary than you think. There ARE indeed organizations that consciously plan which words to use and which to scrap (whether or not they are successful is another story). Look at the Academie Frances in France.
 

Yes, I know about language academies ... there is no relevant one in English.
 

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