Etymology of Russian Fruit and Vegetable Names Posted by Maria on Jan 19, 2015 in language
I have recently read an article about different words for oranges in Spanish. According to the article, the word for an orange in the Dominican Republic is china because Spanish settlers of the country were aware of its Chinese origins. This made me think about the Russian word for “orange” which reflects the same thing. I thought it might be interesting for learners of Russian to look into the origins of Russian names of fruits and vegetables.
Orange
The Russian word for orange, апельси́н, comes from the Dutch appelsien, which was literally translated from the French pomme de Chine, or “Chinese apple.” Oranges originated in China and were brought to Europe by Portuguese sailors. The first attempt to cultivate oranges in Russia took place in 1714.
Tomato
There are two competing words for tomato in Russian — тома́т and помидо́р. Помидор is the word you are most likely to hear in everyday, informal conversation. Томат is normally reserved for formal writing, although this may be the preferred word for older people. Most adjectives are derived from томат — тома́тный сок (tomato juice), тома́тная па́ста (tomato paste). Томат is, of course, a cognate of “tomato” and is derived from the Aztec tomatl. Помидор comes from the Italian pomo d’oro (“golden apple”).
Eggplant/aubergine
The funny thing about the Russian word баклажа́н is that is comes from the same Persian word as the English “aubergine.” Eggplants are also known as си́ненькие in the south of Russia and Ukraine, literally “little blue ones.”
Watermelon
We’ve covered words that mean different things in Russian and other Slavic languages, and арбу́з (watermelon) is one of them. In Ukrainian and Belorussian, гарбуз means “pumpkin.” This word came to Russian from Persian, where it meant “melon,” or literally “donkey cucumber.” According to Wikipedia, watermelons were brought to Russia by Tatars in the 13th and 14 centuries.
Are there any names of Russian foods you were surprised to learn? Are there any that are similar to your language?
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About the Author: Maria
Maria is a Russian-born translator from Western New York. She is excited to share her fascination with all things Russian on this blog. Maria's professional updates are available in English on her website and Twitter and in Russian on Telegram.
Comments:
aljoscha:
Thank you for your mails, but where have your beautiful stress-indications gone?
Yours faithfully
aljoscha
Maria:
@aljoscha Good point. I’m not a fan of underlining as a reader or a writer, but a bit of playing with Unicode entities let me insert proper accent marks. I hope this is better!
Steve:
The Russian word for *potato*. *картофель*, is a direct borrowing from the German *Kartoffel*. .
Once I discovered that the Dutch word was *aardappel* (that is “earth apple,” like the French *pomme de terre*. It was so similar to the German word that I assumed that it shared a common etymology and that somehow the *k* got stuck on it. (By the way, the German equivalent *Erdapfel* is also used in some dialects, apparently in Austria and Switzerland more than in Germany.)
A little more research, and I found out that my conjectured etymology — pomme de terre / aardappel / Kartoffel — as pleasing as it was, was wrong. It seems that the German word is borrowed from the Italian tartificulo, which denotes a truffle,
Maria:
@Steve Steve, yes, I came across that during my research for this article. I vaguely remember hearing that картофель comes from Kraftteufel (the devil’s power in German), but it turned out to be untrue. It must be another instance of folk etymology! It makes sense that Europeans, broadly defined, would name new plants using names from familiar ones (although truffles are technically fungi, but same idea).
Don:
Just a note, your “Etymology of Russian Fruit and Vegetable Names” was so fun and informative to read.
It just prompted me to want to let you know how much I enjoy this Blog – my favorite.
Thanks!
Esther:
The word ‘tomat’ could be related to Dutch as wel – tomaat.
Jana:
The word for cucumber, oguretz, hails from the Greek angoúri which means “unripe”, because that is the state cucumbers are apparently eaten in. Fascinating, how the geographic origins of the fruit stuck to theim etymologically.