Before I moved further south after experiencing Normandy I had always thought that Rodez, in the Aveyron was a town in Spain. It sounded ‘Spanish’ to me !
I had always believed, before I went to sea that Durban was in India , the name conjured up ‘turban’. Ironically it turned up to be a city I was to visit dozens of times during my seafaring days.
I also believed, when I was young that Fiat, the car company was called ‘FLAT’…
but then again I always was a bit dullaly….
We all have misconceptions, often because the ‘obvious’ connections we make aren’t based in reality. I’m pretty sure the France and Netherlands that I thought existed when a child, were only present in posters advertising cheese.
With a surname like yours, I think you should be allowed the occasional flight of fantasy. 
They are only tweets.
I was a very stupid ignorant little girl and thought Beirut and Bayreuth were the same place and found it hard to reconcile my parents’ friends simultaneously being bombed and going to the opera.
Dodo, springs more to mind !
When I was a little kid growing up in Fairbanks Alaska, the radio kept mentining Vietnam. I always thought they were talking about Nome, Alaska.
Also because of my Grandad for many years I thought Ticks jumped off of trees…
Oh and I thought until just a few years ago that the Bee Gees were Australian!
Our daughter still refers to the newel post as “mule post”… something which we blame on her childhood love for old cowboy films where the mules/horses will be tethered to a post to stop 'em wandering while the rider goes into the saloon… hic
She’d hear me say something like “just hang it over the mule post” and it made perfect sense to her… 
Apparently you weren’t the first to make that mistake, in the book Great Operatic Disasters, there’s an account of a Bayreuth performance of Siegfried, where a dragon was designed consisting of three parts (body, neck, head), that were produced by different companies in the UK. Unfortunately, the neck was accidentally sent to Beirut. The result was Siegfried fighting a dragon without a neck, appearing much smaller than intended.
Well that’s a forgiveable one - they did spend quite a few years in Australia:
The Bee Gees were born on the Isle of Man (a British Crown dependency) to English parents and raised in Chorlton, Manchester, England. They emigrated to Brisbane, Australia, in the late 1950s, where they began their music career, before returning to the UK in 1967 to achieve international stardom.
We ended up living near Albi because I was curious about a town with a name ending in the letter i.
Certainly some for the words of songs.
“And though I miss you, Shirley, pardon.
A John Mayall song I heard “it’s a little bit deceiving” was actually “it’s eleven fifty-seven”.
For years I thought Queen was singing Miss Miller in Bohemian Rhapsody rather than bismillah.
Miss Miller was one of my Sunday school teachers so there was a connection of sorts to the devil
Until you mentioned it, I thought it was ‘Miss Miller’ too.
Albi is a great place to live even if it was called ‘Rochdale’ or wherever.
You should watch “Bohemian Rhapsody “ even the music producer couldn’t get it. Now its probably going to get someone into trouble being a muslim phrase. 
Not only, it is just Arabic. It means in the name of god, and pops up in Christian texts too.
Pepto Bismol. - Good for what ails you. Calvados has a similar effect but tastes better.
Curious that the Spanish use “Would to Allah” ( Ojalá) to say “if only”.
A wonderful illustration of the power of language.
The Arabs colonised Spain from 711 to 1492 - it would be surprising if there wasn’t a strong trace of Arabic in Spanish. And Al lah isn’t a name, it just means the god, like dieu or Gott or dio. In Hebrew (very closely related Semitic language) god starts off being El and then we get into names which are often charms and loaded and not to be spoken. Acc to folklore god has 100 names which are epithets (and obviously only Bactrian camels know the 100th). In the name of god the merciful the compassionate is an example (bi in +ism the name+al lah the god+ al rahman the merciful+al rahim the compassionate). Mecca originally had a shrine to a tripartite goddess the main one being al Lat, the goddess. So you can see one way of making something feminine in Arabic. Isn’t language great 
Don’t encourage me to bang on about the amazingness of Arabic grammar 
Edited to add ojalá is likely to be insha’allah = god willing
