The jam-filled pastry known since the 1930s as the bismark is also known regionally by other names. For example, in eastern Canada it’s called a jelly doughnut; in Manitoba it’s called a jam buster, and in parts of the American Midwest if s called a Berliner or, if it’s slightly elongated, a long-John. The pastry may be German in origin, as is suggested by two of its names: Berliner means a native of Berlin, while Bismark suggests Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the modern German empire. However, it is possible that the bismark was named after the German chancellor only indirectly: the pastry may, for instance, have been invented in and named after Bismarck, North Dakota, a city given the chancellor’s surname in a bid to entice him into financing the Northern Pacific Railway. Alternatively, the bismark pastry may have been named after The Bismarck, a famous German battleship whose name honours the chancellor and whose shape (until the British torpedoed it in 1941) resembled the pastry. In any event, one way or another the ultimate source of the bismark’s name is the chancellor’s surname. In turn, this German surname derives from biscopesmark, meaning bishop’s boundary, a name the chancellor’s ancestors acquired because they lived just on the edge of a bishop’s jurisdiction.