it’s the same joke as “caesar salad was invented by julius caesar”
Except it's a bit different because the Caesar in Caesar salad (named after chef Caesar Cardini) is actually spelled the same way as Julius Caesar, whereas Neapolitan (meaning of Naples) is not related to the name Napoleon at all.
It hadn't occurred to me that Neapolitan ice cream might have something to do with the name Napoleon before I saw this meme; the similarity of the words and incorrect implication that they are related is what makes it funny.
You mean we're expected to know that Neapolitan is in reference to Naples (despite the ice cream not being from there) and doesn't relate to Napoleon at all?
A common reading comprehension error is people that have either been taught, or taught themselves to sight-read every word, and not just the super short ones. So rather than seeing what word is actually there for longer words, they see some of the more obvious or prominent letters and guess what the rest might be. And most of the people I know who learned that way never fixed it, no matter how big of a problem it became later. And it's like, a third of the people I know. Way more common than would be expected.
So yeah, those people will see Napoleon and Neapolitan and see pretty much the exact same word.
While it was obviously invented by the Prussian nobleman Fürst Pückler, who also invented modern landscape gardening and got his wealth from a series of erotic travel journals about England?
People are bad at reading. Leads to a surprising number of english readers seeing Napoleon and Neapolitan as the same word. I went into more detail in a different reply in this thread if you want to know more.
I work with a woman who believes she is the most wise and informed person alive, but is shockingly consistent in how very wrong she is about almost everything. Whether it's a completely incorrect fact or a misunderstanding of how letters work, she's always sure to hit you with a "Believe it or not, [insert either extremely common or wildly incorrect knowledge here]".
Recently she went on for a day about the new Napoleon cake out bakery was selling, and wound up buying half a cake for herself. She invited several of us back to try this Napoleon cake (which was nice of her). As you have likely predicted, though, this was not a Napoleon cake.