Why do I have to use the "origin" for the pull to be successfull

Question

when I do : git pull BranchName

it tells me everything is up to date but I know that is not true. When I do:

git pull origin BranchName

then I get the files I was expecting.

Is there an easy way to answer this or do I need to provide more details.

PS One thing I did do just to understant themechanics of git is give the branch name in my cloned repo a different name than on the remote repo. I did however put the right name in the config file like so:
[branch "myUDPspinoff"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/UDPspinoff

this worked before on another repo but not this one. And when I put everything in the same name thenI did not need to use origin anymore.

Answer 1

Origin here means server, the server that you're pulling from. If you don't specify 'origin' (or another server at it's place), you'll pull from yourself, which will tell you everything is up to date.

Once you add origin, you're pulling from somewhere else, which is what I assume you want to do.