A bagel is a bagel is a bagel, and a pita is a pita is a pita: but is a bialy a cebularz?
Generic names are not usually at the top of the agenda of trademark professionals, which is too bad. There may be little to be pondered about why "table" is a generic name for… well, a table. But when the product is tied a specific place, or relates to a certain population, the backstory for the name can get a lot more interesting. Consider the fate of the bread product known as a “bialy”. First, some background: This Kat is planning a visit to his paternal ancestry in northeast Poland. In inspecting the map, he realized that the closest big Polish city is Bialystok . When you are this Kat's age and grew up in the Eastern part of the US, the name Bialystok conjures up the name of a bread product from his youth known as a "bialy". A bialy from Bialystok—got it? But that was decades ago. What about the bialy and the persistence of its name today? All of which took this Kat beyond the world of the pita and bagel to the Polish bread delight, the cebularz . ...