I heard that when the Brittish navy started issuing lime juice to their sailers to prevent scurvy, it was really what we call lemons today. Back then the yellow things were called limes.
What were limes called back then? Did they even exist? Why the change in names?
Wikipedia says “The Royal Navy originally thought lemons were overripe limes which they resemble and their sailors became known as limeys, not lemonies.” No source given, though.
I don’t know if this is relevant, but I know that in Portuguese, for example, the word for lemon and lime is the same: limão. When they need to differentiate between the two, they say limão verde (green lemon) or limão amarelo (yellow lemon).
Perhaps in English the words used to be the same too. But this is just a WAG.
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.
The older name is lemon, at least in English. IT shows up around 1400, and is spelled lymon. The spelling doesn’t change to lemon until the 1600’s.
Limes don’t show up in English until 1638.
As for what the Royal navy did, they evidently issued “lime juice” in about the 1790’s. The derisive term “lime-juicer” was used in print starting in and about the mid-late 1800’s. To Australians, it could mean a Brit who had recently come to Australia, and to Americans a British ship.
I think they knew the difference between a lime and a lemon by the 1790’s. But I can’t prove it yet.
I frequently bartend Tejano concerts. For anyone not familiar with Tejano (pronounced: teh-haw-no) music, it’s kinda like Spanish-language/culture country music.
The vast majority of the concert-goers speak Spanish as a primary language, and when they order beer or Margaritas, they ask for a limon. They mean “lime”.
Then there’s Bacardi Limon, which is rum infused with the flavor of lime, not lemon.
jus my two cents worth…
down here, in the southern parts of india, we have one word to describe both lime and lemon.
i have a tough time when i try to explain that the two english words actually mean two different fruits…ermm… they do right?
Heh. Yeah. Limes are green. Go great with Coronas. Lemons are yellow. Not so good with Coronas.
All those citrus things interbreed like nuts. View them as a continuum ranging from infra-lemon on one side to the ultra-orange on the other. In the middle is mess of confusing half-cases. Confusion is natural.
I always thought the British Navy used limes (and hence the name ‘limeys’) because at the time they were introduced to prevent scurvy they could not secure a reliable supply of lemons. Something to do with whoever was at war at the time and who controlled what trade routes.
But I could be wrong.
Y’see, you can’t always tell by the outside if something is a lemon or not. I used to have an '86 Nissan Sentra that…What?
Oh.
Sorry. Nevermind.
Wait a minute…does this mean that lemons and limes aren’t the same fruit? I always assumed (like in portuguese, the name in french is the same for both, with the adjective “green” added to tell them apart) that they were the same fruit, one ripe and the other not.
The word lemon is the original one from Arabic.
Lemons and limes were introduced into Europe by Arabs who planted gardens in Spain and Sicily.
The Arabic form of the word, laymûn, was borrowed into European languages. Arabic got the word from Persian limu, which got it from Hindi nimbu or nibu. When you denasalize the initial n-, it becomes l-. This happened in the word lilac too: Persian got its word lilak (with the diminutive suffix -k) from Hindi nil ‘blue’.
The original source for the Hindi word nimbu or nibu for lemons and limes was one of the indigenous Munda languages of aboriginal India, belonging to the Austroasiatic language family, according to the etymology in the Oxford Hindi Dictionary. Other Austroasiatic languages include Khmer and Vietnamese.
See this page which tracks the etymon for “Citrus acida” (?) in the various Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages:
http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/Indian%20Lexicon/citrus.htm
The Munda languages are spoken in India by aboriginal hill tribes, such as Santal, Oraon, Birhor, and Ho. Their relationship to other branches of Austronesian like Mon-Khmer and Vietnamese is a very distant one.
In Italian, too, they have only one word for both lemons and limes. In fact, every language I can think of except English has only one word for both fruits. This goes back to the aboriginal Munda word in India, which used only one name to cover both. The real question here is how English managed to differentiate two words, one for the green one and one for the yellow one.
Oh yeah, botanical taxonomy also differentiates the two: Lemon is Citrus limon and lime is Citrus aurantifolia.
The two fruits not only look different, they taste different too. Seems natural to call them different names. But if you go to South India and check out the lemons, they are small, like limes, and the pulp has a drier consistency more like limes. The limes themselves are less green and more yellowish. In other words, the cultivars are not as differentiated in South Indian varieties.
In modern Persian, although the word limu is used for both fruits, they distinguish limes by calling them limu torsh meaning ‘sour lemon’. Likewise in Modern Arabic, they call limes laymûn hâmiD, ‘sour lemon’.
The American Heritage Dictionary etymology for “lime” says this word came from “Arabic lima, lim, probably from limun, lemon” to explain why we use two different words in English. However, I checked several Arabic dictionaries, including al-Munjid, al-Mawrid, An Advanced Learner’s Arabic-English Dictonary, and Hans Wehr’s Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. None of them had this alleged word lima, lim, so I am skeptical of the AHD claim. I did find in al-Mawrid by Munir al-Ba’labakki an Arabic translation of “lime” as laym, but this seems to be one of those Lebanese neologisms coined by al-Ba‘labakki after the English word. Maybe because English has differentiated the two fruits, now other languages are trying to find different words for them. English-speaking tourists go to Arab countries and ask how to say “lemon” and “lime,” they’re told the same word. “Really? I can’t believe it, we have two different words for them. Aren’t they different fruits? How come only one word for both?” Etc.
Sounds like what we call a “key lime” in these parts.
No, they are basically a different species, although as has been noted, they do split genetic material between each other. Still, you don’t get lemons and limes off the same plant.
Citrus ensues?
Brits could have ended up being called “Krauts” instead of Limeys. Captain Cook took over a ton of sauerkraut with him on at least two of his voyages. He did take a small amount of lime juice as well, but it was sauerkraut that was fed to the sailors every day. He never lost any of his men to scurvy.
Lemons (Citrus limon) are said to be a cultivar (or perhaps a sub species) of Citrus medica - Citron. One site claims it is actually a hybrid: Citrus medica (Citron) and Citrus aurantifolia
Limes are one of the original species that make up most of the citruses: Citrus aurantifolia.
Key limes are just Citrus aurantifolia. Sorry Floridians, but your lime is really the same as the Mexican Lime (same species).
The members of the citrus genus are all “sexually liberal” species. They cross with each other easily, which is why there are so many different types of citrus.
Or alternately, that is why there are only a few kinds of citrus. One thing just sort of melds into the next. Sort of depend how you look at it.
I’ve been wondering about this recently, as I work in a bar. I have learned that if people with certain accents (French or Spanish sounding, for example) ask for a gin and tonic with lemon, I’ll be saving myself a trip by tossing a couple of lime slices in there instead. Certain things, like rum and coke, are ordered with either lemons or limes, so there’s a lot of “No, not the yellow ones, the green lemons” when I get the drinks to a table. Now I know why!