sandwich：不想停下來的伯爵
People have been putting food between slices of bread for thousands of years. But the name we use for it today comes from an English nobleman who lived in the 1700s: John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich.
According to the most famous version of the story, the Earl loved gambling. He was said to sit at the card table for hours at a time, refusing to stop even for a proper meal. Instead, he asked his servants to bring him some meat between two pieces of bread. That way, he could eat with one hand, keep playing with the other, and not get grease on his cards. Before long, other people started ordering "the same as Sandwich", and the name stuck.
The story first appeared in a travel book written by a Frenchman who visited London in the 1760s. Some historians think it isn't quite fair to the Earl. He was a busy politician who later ran the British navy, and they suggest he probably ate his sandwiches at his desk while he was working, not at a card table. Either way, it seems he was a man who didn't like to stop what he was doing just to eat.
The name itself comes from a small town in the south-east of England called Sandwich. In Old English, it meant something like "sandy harbour" or "sandy town".
So when you grab a quick sandwich for lunch at your desk, you're following a very old tradition.
人們把食物夾在麵包片中間吃，已經有好幾千年的歷史了。可是我們今天用來稱呼它的名字，來自 18 世紀的一位英國貴族：第四代三明治伯爵約翰．蒙塔古。
照最有名的說法，這位伯爵非常愛賭博。據說他能在牌桌前一坐就是好幾個小時，連好好吃頓飯都不肯停下來。他叫僕人把一些肉夾在兩片麵包中間送過來。這樣，他就能一隻手拿著吃，另一隻手繼續打牌，也不會把油沾到牌上。沒多久，其他人也開始點「跟三明治伯爵一樣的」，這個名字就這樣流傳下來了。
這個故事最早出現在一位 1760 年代造訪倫敦的法國人所寫的遊記裡。有些歷史學家認為，這麼說對伯爵不太公平。他是個忙碌的政治人物，後來還主管英國海軍，所以他們認為，他比較可能是一邊在辦公桌前工作、一邊吃三明治，而不是在牌桌上。不管是哪一種說法，他似乎都是個不想為了吃飯而停下手邊工作的人。
而「Sandwich」這個名字本身，來自英格蘭東南部的一個小鎮。在古英文裡，它的意思大概是「多沙的港口」或「多沙的小鎮」。
所以，當你在辦公桌前隨手拿個三明治當午餐時，其實是在延續一個非常古老的傳統。