Don't Get Cocky. Get Kaki.

For those of you who know that I produced a podcast for two years called "Namely" in which each episode was about the name of something or a group of related somethings, a blog post in which I investigate names won't surprise you. For those who had no idea I had a podcast, it still might not surprise you.

The Albanian word "kaki" is pronounced like the English word "cocky" (which I brazenly say as an expert in the subject.) But unlike in English, it has naught to do with brash overconfidence. Rather kaki is a fruit, a persimmon, a variety of Oriental Persimmon to be exact. It is commonly grown in Albania—and many other places, though it's native to China and East Asia—and this time of year you find lots of them in the fruit and vegetable markets.

Oh yeah, that's right, I'm kaki!

The name kaki is very logical. It comes from the taxonomical name of the fruit, Diospyros kaki. (All persimmons are from the genus Diospyros. The species kaki is the most common worldwide.) This led me to wonder, where did we get the name persimmon in English? Most romance languages have some variation on kaki as the name. But German uses persimmon. So it must have come from German, right? No!

Many English words come from a Germanic root. After all, the Angles and Saxons who settled on the island of Britain were Germanic peoples. There are a lot of French influences in English because the Normans (from Normandy, France) conquered Britain and brought their language with them. And there are Nordic influences from Viking conquests. English has a very muddied family tree. But persimmon isn't an example of any of these influences. The word persimmon goes the other way.

Often, a newly introduced item in a society, say a fruit or a form of livestock, comes with a name already attached. Take for example bananas. In almost all of Europe, the word for banana sounds almost exactly like banana. Some spell it banane, but you can tell it is a variation on the same word.

Think about water. Everyone had water, and they all needed their own word for water before they started interacting with other people who had a different language. It is "water" in English coming from "wasser" in German. But it is "eau" in French, "agua" in Spanish, and "ujë" in Albanian. We all had this word early in our languages.

But bananas didn't exist in Europe. People were already trading with each other, speaking to each other, before any European had ever seen a banana. When the banana was introduced to Europe by Portuguese sailors who found them in West Africa, they came with the name "banema". That's what the Guineans who introduced the fruit to the sailors called it. Yes, banema became a bit corrupted into banane, but everyone agreed that this weird new fruit went by the same weird new name.

Similarly, llamas and alpacas were native to South America. No European had ever heard of such a beast. So when they were eventually introduced to Europe, their names were introduced at the same time. Most European languages use some variation of lama or alpaka to describe them.

What's interesting is that pineapples don't follow this pattern. They almost do, but not quite. In most of Europe, the word for pineapple is anana or ananas. But in Spain, they say piña. And of course in English, we say pineapple. Why is that?

Pineapples had a duel introduction to Europe. Columbus brought some back from his trips to the New World. Because the shape of a pineapple reminded the Spanish so much of a pine cone, it got its pine related name. But this new fruit did not become widespread in European trade.

That again waited for the Portuguese. They brought back the fruit from Brazil and got the name "anana" from there. There is some debate about whether "anana" was the native name for that particular fruit or if it meant something like "excellent fruit." But the Portuguese sailors took it as the name of that particular fruit. And once again, the name was introduced along with the fruit, and much of Europe called these things ananas.

But what about English? Did we get the word as a corruption of Spanish? As it turns out, no. This is the period of exploration, English ships are sailing all over the world, discovering a lot of new plants. And it was incredibly common, when finding some fruit one had never seen before, to call it a name that ended in apple. There are custard apples, wood apples, star apples, horse apples, and more. John Smith (better known for hooking up with Pocahontas) described a tropical fruit he saw that looked like a giant pine cone as a Pine Apple. The name stuck, though the two words were smashed into one.

Not all Spanish speakers say piña, by the way. A lot of New World Spanish speakers also call the fruit ananás, but then again, their ancestors weren't introduced to the fruit through trans-Atlantic trade. They lived where it grew.

Okay, back to the persimmon. The kaki. The fruit, which grew natively in China, was introduced to the Japanese in the eighth century. They called it kaki. This Japanese name spread, as the fruit began to be traded, and it is also the source of the taxonomical name.

But there are other species of persimmons. In fact, there are two species which are native to North America. Diospyros texana is native to Northern Mexico and parts of the Southwest United States. And Diospyros virginiana is native to the eastern United States. In fact, its more common name is the American Persimmon. When European settlers came to the eastern United States, they were introduced to this new fruit, or at least new to them. And they took the Algonquin name for the fruit, something like pessamin or putchamin. Like most words that work their way into English, this one got anglicized and became persimmon.

This is an example of German taking a word for an item from English, rather than the more common opposite direction. Isn't it nice to know we're willing to give back to those who gave so much to us? But don't worry, Germany. While we may offer you persimmons, we won't get cocky.