Many people eat foods all the time without realizing how they came to be called what they are. Today I am pleased to bring you up-to-date in this interesting area we'll call Food 101.
CHICKEN: Everyone knows why the chicken crossed the road, who Colonel Sanders is, and what you call someone who's afraid to do something. But I'll bet you don't know how chicken came to be called chicken. The word is actually a corruption of the original term CHEAP EATIN'. Over the years, it just got shortened to chicken. I suspect that this began in the south, probably Alabama, where (somewhat) understandable English has only been spoken for the last several decades.
BAKED ALASKA: Some folks think that this dish -- sponge cake and ice cream with meringue covering -- was conceived in the State of Alaska. The Alaska part is true, but the current ingredients only came to be once the dessert found its way to California, where everything gets fancified. Actually, the first baked Alaska was the brain child of a hunting tour guide named Homer Busby who, finding himself without provisions and with six clients in the wilds of what would eventually be called the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge, threw together some packed snow and ice, spritzed it with the last of his scented nasal spray, and told 'em it was a special treat called baked Alaska. (Unfortunately, these days the state has become more famous for its half-baked Alaska... Sarah Palin.)
HOT DOGS: Ever present at picnics, ballparks, and holiday gatherings, the simple hot dog was originally a unique Far Eastern delicacy. In Viet Nam, where they have eaten dog for centuries, they used to just roast it on a spit like a rabbit (in England) or a squirrel (in West Virginia and some other remote parts of Arkansas). But in more modern times, with foreigners always fighting over their territory, they came to realize that most other cultures were revolted at the idea of eating dog. So they disguised it by grinding it up and encasing it in a thin, edible skin (you don't want to know where that came from). Only later did the more delicate of its devotees come to refer to them as frankfurters or "franks" when a German importer named Frank Smaltz became the most well-known supplier of hot dogs.
BREAD: The staff of life has been around for centuries, of course. Originally, people threw some simple ingredients together -- flour, yeast, etc. -- baked it, then they'd eat on it all day long. In fact, the word BREAD is actually an acronym. BREAD stood for Baked Ready, Eat All Day.
So there you have it, the real way four different foods got named.