Word “Apple” in EUROPE

31 comments
  1. Spain and Portugal:

    From earlier mazana, from Vulgar Latin (Iberian dialect) mattiana, shortened from Latin malum matianum (literally “apple of Matius”), referring to a kind of apple. Matius, a friend of Caesar, was a Roman horticulturist and author of cookbooks.

  2. In Romanian “poamă(sg)/poame(pl)” defines any fruit but at least where my grandparents lived, in Moldova (the region, not the country) it was often used to refer to grapes in particular. The plural could mean fruits in general but the singular was almost always used with the meaning of grapes. It’s definitely old fashioned today and I’m sure it will soon be an archaism (if it isn’t already) but to my grandparents it was an everyday word.

  3. When potatoes acme to Greece for the first time in the 19th century..

    they were translated from French ‟pommes de terre” and called ‟γεώμηλα” 🙂 Really cool map! Thanx!

  4. Mildly fun fact: I am from Turkey and my grandfather was mad whenever i say ’elma’. He was telling me always ’alma’ is true form of it. Now after all years i see his point. ’Alma’ is probably is the original form it bt changed in Anatolia by time.

  5. For me, the germanic names for apple are completely different from the slavic names for it, so much that, even if they share the same root, they should at least be colored differently.

  6. Interesting. However, I have to correct something:

    The word apple in German is written actually with a capital A and not with a small one, i.e. “Apfel”. For all names of objects, animals, vehicles and so on, the first letter is always capitalized in German.

  7. In Breton, it’s *aval*, and it’s related to *apple*, *apfel* and more obviously the Welsh word *afal*.

  8. Interesting to see how in scandinavia the “ä/e” at the beginning is prevalent cause here in Austria it’s also with an “ä/e” sound at the beginning”.

    “A epfl”

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