Let’s get this out of the way first: I call them crisps. I grew up calling them crisps, buying crisps, arguing about crisps. I’ve muttered “they’re not chips, mate” under my breath more times than I care to count.
I’m born Australian, but grown up English. I know the rules.
But when it came time to name this website — a sprawling, salty archive of everything snackable, snackish, and unreasonably crinkly — “Crispopedia” just didn’t resonate.
Don’t get me wrong, “crisp” is a fine word. It does what it says on the packet: sharp, clean, unambiguous.
But “Chipopedia”? It has… crunch. It’s friendlier. Rounder. A bit cheeky. It sounds like a place you want to visit when you’re hungry and nostalgic and fifteen minutes early for the train.
Besides, “chip” is global. Sure, in the UK, “chips” are hot and soggy and served in vinegar-stained paper. But step outside our lovely, leaky island and the word transforms. In America? Chips are what we call crisps. In Australia? Same story. And in countless international snack aisles from Tokyo to Tallinn, “chips” is just the lingua franca of fried potato.
And truthfully — if you’ve spent as much time as I have poking around the corners of Britain’s crisp heritage — you realise “crisps” are only the beginning. What do we call Monster Munch? Skips? Hula Hoops? Pom-Bear? Frazzles? They are crisps, technically. But they’re also… more. “Crisp” feels too rigid. Too limiting. Too posh, even.
“Chip” is elastic. It stretches. It accommodates the maize snacks and the reformed potato shapes and the weird little corn pillows that defy all taxonomy. And the suffix “-pedia” gives it that air of mock-authority I like — as if a man who’s eaten this many Wotsits must know what he’s talking about.
So no, it’s not Crispopedia. It’s Chipopedia. A crisp site with chip sensibilities. A nod to the transatlantic confusion of snack language. And maybe — just maybe — a quiet protest against anyone who takes naming conventions too seriously.
After all, whatever you call them, the best crisps (yes, crisps) are the ones you didn’t plan to eat, found at the back of a glove compartment, and devoured before you even remembered to check the best before date.
Long live the chip.
