Having grown up in Texas but later going out of state for college, I realized that the word people in the Houston area use to mean "soda pop" is different than the words used by people in other areas of the country to refer to the same thing. In fact, it startled me to realize that speakers of the North Houston dialect of English actually use a brand or trade name as a substitute for the generic name of this common item. It was indeed a regular experience to hear people answer the question "What kind of Coke® do you want?" with a response like "How about a Pepsi®."
This interested me enough that I began to make a list of similar cases where English speakers use a single brand name to refer to an entire class of product, regardless of which particular brand of that product it is that they are referring to. I have included this list here for your perusal and enjoyment.
The list is obviously not complete; several of the examples are specific to a particular dialect and not to all American or world speakers of English, or are older terms that have fallen out of common usage. Since my experience has been primarily in suburban east Texas and suburban Utah, I do not have enough experience with other dialects to provide examples from other areas. Sometimes as my friends and I were coming up with this list, we found that the use of the brand name is so prevalent that we had a difficult time coming up with the "real" name for an item. In some cases we still haven't thought of one. If you can think of another example, or if you can think of a more correct "actual name," please send me e-mail at h.p.robertson@m.cc.utah.edu.
Here they are, in no particular order:
Coke Soda pop Rollerblades Inline skates Pop Tarts Toaster pastries Kleenex Facial tissue Xerox Machine Photocopy machine JELLO Gelatin dessert Levi's Jeans Oreo's Cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies Walkman Portable cassette player Discman Portable CD player Q-tips Cotton swabs Band-Aid's Adhesive Bandages Kool-Aid Flavored Drink Mix IBM DOS based personal computer Chicken McNuggets Chicken nuggets Happy Meal Kid's meal Frisbee Flying disc Twizzler's Licorice Cheerio's Toasted oats cereal Jeep ? Popsicle Frozen juice dessert Jet Ski Personal motorized watercraft Aqua Socks Water shoes Tevas Water sandals Crayolas Crayons Scotch Tape Clear adhesive tape Ziplock Bags Sealable storage bags Chapstick Lip Balm Carmex Lip Balm White Out Correction Fluid Liquid Paper Correction Fluid Tupperware ?
Credits: Rob Robbins, Paul Robertson, Joel Weight, Lindsey Everett