Who hasn’t at least heard of a duffel bag? Come to think of it, who hasn’t either owned one or known someone that has owned one? If you don’t fall into any of those categories, then you are going to be in the absolute minority.
However, the duffel bag is another prime example of an object for which we often have no real understanding where it comes from. After all, duffel sounds like a strange word that to many makes no sense whatsoever. Well, when you actually research the origins, you discover that it is far more straightforward and easy to understand than you would expect.
In fact, the name ‘duffel bag’ simply comes from the town in Belgium that was the first to supply the materials that were then used to create the finished product. That town was called Duffel, so the manufacturer decided just to keep that name as a kind of homage to the important role that it played in getting things to market. Now, does that not make you start to think about other things and whether their name stems from a real place?