Love it or hate it.

I love it - Marmite, that is.  But I'd never really thought about where the name comes from.  It's a French word (and therefore presumably should be pronounced mar-meet) and simply means an earthenware cooking pot - there's a picture of one on the label.  Although invented (if that's the right word) in Germany in the late 19th century, it was first produced commercially in the early 1900s in Burton-on-Trent.  It is of course concentrated brewer's yeast, and Burton was - and to a certain extent still is - a major centre of beer brewing and therefore provided an easy source of the basic material.