[bombcar]

It never occurred to me that Palo Alto means Tall Stick(Tree) even though I knew Alto meant tall.

[noodlenotes]

Just wait until you see the Stanford logo.

http://identity.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SU_N...

[kajecounterhack]

Isn't Stanford's tree a Sequoia, which is different from a Redwood?

[dhosek]

As noted in another comment, the genus of the redwood is Sequoia. The trees with the common name sequoia (which are a different genus) tend to be shorter than redwoods but also much thicker in their trunks. They are native to the mountains further inland (you'll find them in Yosemite as well as (unsurprisingly) Sequoia/King's Canyon National Park). I'm pretty sure that the Stanford tree is, in fact, a Sequoia and not a sequoia.

[brudgers]

The coastal redwood is sequoia sempervirens.

The giant sequoia is sequoiadendron giganteum.

So depending on how you look at it, either species is or ain’t a sequoia or vice versa or both.

[zsmi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Tree

"The "Tree" is representative of El Palo Alto, the tree that appears on both the official seal of the University and the municipal seal of Palo Alto, Stanford's nearby city."

[guipsp]

If it makes you feel better, it never occurred to me either, and I know the meaning of both Palo and Alto

[emmelaich]

Same! Even though I knew the words palisades, impale, the phrase "beyond the pale" (beyond the fence).

All the same derivation.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pale#Etymology_2_2

[jacquesm]

Pole in English = Paal in Dutch = Palo in Spanish

[kurofune]

Not really, "palo" means "stick" in spanish.

Pole = Poste.

[aljg]

"Pole" in English is derived [1] from the Latin palus (from whence "palo"). The archaic English word "pale" (also meaning stick or stake) survives in the expression "beyond the pale."

[1]https://www.etymonline.com/word/pole

[kurofune]

That's a neat etymological fact I wasn't completely aware of, but in today's spanish "palo" doesn't mean "pole" nor "poste", it just means "stick".

I believe we are talking about two different things, because I'm only clarifying the current meaning of the word.

[jacquesm]

https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/palo

[canadianfella]

Poste is post... pole and stick can refer to the same thing.