# You say Potato, I say Tomato **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 21, 2013, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528 "2013-03-21T10:03:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/21 "2013-03-21T16:52:37Z")
The first tomatoes to reach Italy in the 16th century happened to be of a [yellow](http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+tomatoes&hl=en&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=EDtLUenUGbil4APQjIDIBg&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1066&bih=544) variety, which is why they got called “_pomo d’oro_.” This has also been borrowed into Arabic as _bandurah_. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/22 "2013-03-21T17:54:06Z")
It’s worth noting (OP touches on it) that potatoes themselves are named for something else - the sweet potato. Sweet potatoes were called ‘batata’ (and the modern botanical name reflects this - _Ipomoea batatas_) - when earth-apples came along, they were named potatoes because of their resemblance to sweet potatoes. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/23 "2013-03-21T18:39:06Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > It is. I assume the etymology is ultimately from Italian. Yeah I’d say so. The only reason I know it, or any Polish, is the Polish supermarket across the road from my store is cheap. Sometimes though it’s a crapshoot what I’m actually buying. Fasola = beans too. Yay, I’m learning 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/24 "2013-03-21T19:14:04Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Fasola = beans too. Yay, I’m learning 🙂 So it’s do re mi beans ti do? ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/25 "2013-03-21T19:39:06Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > So it’s do re mi beans ti do? Well, they are the musical fruit. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/26 "2013-03-21T20:26:20Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Yeah I’d say so. The only reason I know it, or any Polish, is the Polish supermarket across the road from my store is cheap. Sometimes though it’s a crapshoot what I’m actually buying. Fasola = beans too. Yay, I’m learning 🙂 That’s pretty much the way I start learning any other language…through their food. I probably know about a hundred words in Hindi, for instance, and the bulk of them are food related. Even though I grew up with Polish, there’s a lot of words for certain ingredients that I know in, say, Hungarian (where I lived for a few years) that I don’t know in Polish. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/27 "2013-03-21T22:38:02Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Why didn’t Aztecs have a word for potato? Because it’s of Andean highland origin and basically a cool climate crop. It grows well at high elevations and in the temperate zone, but not in tropical lowlands. So it wasn’t able to diffuse from South America to Middle America across the gap in the mountain chain in Panama. The tomato and most other New World crops are of lowland origin and were able to spread more widely. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/28 "2013-03-22T01:16:18Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > The first tomatoes to reach Italy in the 16th century happened to be of a [yellow](http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+tomatoes&hl=en&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=EDtLUenUGbil4APQjIDIBg&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1066&bih=544) variety, which is why they got called “_pomo d’oro_.” This has also been borrowed into Arabic as _bandurah_. ^ This. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/29 "2013-03-22T01:20:57Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > … Even though I grew up with Polish, there’s a lot of words for certain ingredients that I know in, say, Hungarian (where I lived for a few years) that I don’t know in Polish. Ah, if only kielbasa were kolbasz! Unbelievably, there are no more Hungarian butchers left in NYC. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/30 "2013-03-22T01:40:12Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > So it’s do re mi beans ti do? Somebody once wrote: I give, a king, to me, she does, alone, up there, yes see, I double give…I give to me alone I trouble give! Somebody else once wrote a mass with the notes la, sol, fa, mi, re, and performed it addressed to an Italian King asking if he could take a vacation. ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/31 "2013-03-22T01:59:55Z")
\ … OK, if I did this right, everyone the world over is now familiar with the one and only names for: tree apple ground apple orange ground apple yellow tree apple tree orange vine apple orange vine apple squashed tree apple vine squashed apple ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/32 "2013-03-22T04:48:28Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Why didn’t Aztecs have a word for potato? We don’t know they didn’t. My table in the OP wasn’t exclusive, I only put in the native words that appeared to lead to European words. That said, it’s a cool climate crop and probably wouldn’t survive in the hot dry limestone of central Mexico. Indeed I’m not aware of any evidence the Inca and the Aztecs directly communicated or traded. The panama isthmus was as good a barrier to travel as swamps or steep mountains, I believe. > [@Mangetout](#): > > It’s worth noting (OP touches on it) that potatoes themselves are named for something else - the sweet potato. > > Sweet potatoes were called ‘batata’ (and the modern botanical name reflects this - _Ipomoea batatas_) - when earth-apples came along, they were named potatoes because of their resemblance to sweet potatoes. According to wikipedia ‘potato’ is a mix of the two origin words I put in, ‘batata’ and ‘papa’: > [@](#): > > The English word potato comes from Spanish patata (the name used in Spain). The Spanish Royal Academy says the Spanish word is a compound of the Taino batata (sweet potato) and the Quechua papa (potato) So the vowel/consonant pattern came from one word and the plosive ‘p’ from the other. There was quite some confusion between sweet potatoes and potatoes: > [@](#): > > The name potato originally referred to a type of sweet potato rather than the other way around, although there is actually no close relationship between the two plants. The English confused the two plants one for the other. In many of the chronicles detailing agriculture and plants, no distinction is made between the two. The 16th-century English herbalist John Gerard used the terms “bastard potatoes” and “Virginia potatoes” for this species, and referred to sweet potatoes as “common potatoes”. Potatoes are occasionally referred to as “Irish potatoes” or “white potatoes” in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes. But it seems there’s no particular reason for the exceptions noted in the OP? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/33 "2013-03-22T04:51:17Z")
> [@moriah](#): > > \ … OK, if I did this right, everyone the world over is now familiar with the one and only names for: > > tree apple > ground apple > orange ground apple > yellow tree apple > tree orange > vine apple > orange vine apple > squashed tree apple > vine squashed apple How do ya like them apples? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/34 "2013-03-22T13:39:01Z")
Is there any human language where potatoes are “earth bread”, like they are for the dwarves? They do seem more like a bread than a fruit. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/35 "2013-03-22T14:53:08Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > … > > There was quite some confusion between sweet potatoes and potatoes… Throw “yams” into the mix and it’s serious Babel. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/36 "2013-03-23T05:45:20Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > > [@TriPolar](#): > > > > Why didn’t Aztecs have a word for potato? > > Because it’s of Andean highland origin and basically a cool climate crop. It grows well at high elevations and in the temperate zone, but not in tropical lowlands. So it wasn’t able to diffuse from South America to Middle America across the gap in the mountain chain in Panama. > > The tomato and most other New World crops are of lowland origin and were able to spread more widely. This lends insight into the curse by Shoshone chief Washakie in 1887 when Indian commissioners were trying to make the western hunter-gatherer tribes start farming under the Dawes act. Chief Washakie told them: “God damn a potato!” Even though it’s native to the Americas, it was still foreign to North American tribes. North America and South America were not joined together before Panama was raised up to connect them. Panama is not of the continental crust but uplifted oceanic crust. Which has to do with why the land bridge between the two continents is tropical lowlands in the Darién Gap, where the Cordillera system chain is interrupted, and the potato did not indigenously transfer to North America. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/37 "2013-03-23T06:02:49Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Somebody once wrote: > > I give, a king, to me, she does, alone, up there, yes see, I double give…I give to me alone I trouble give! In case anyone wonders what this is talking about, it’s the do-re-mi syllables which coincidentally form words in Italian. do = I give re = king mi = to me fa = he/she/it does sol (short for sola) = alone la = there si = yes The scale. do = I give mi = to me sol (short for sola/o) = alone The tonic major triad. > [@](#): > > Somebody else once wrote a mass with the notes la, sol, fa, mi, re, and performed it addressed to an Italian King asking if he could take a vacation. ‘There alone make me, king’ How did we get on this starting from potatoes? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/38 "2013-03-23T16:37:44Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > In case anyone wonders what this is talking about, it’s the do-re-mi syllables which coincidentally form words in Italian. > do = I give > re = king > mi = to me > fa = he/she/it does > sol (short for sola) = alone > la = there > si = yes > The scale. > > do = I give > mi = to me > sol (short for sola/o) = alone > The tonic major triad. > ‘There alone make me, king’ Yes. The first scale/sentence and chord/sentence are from _Finnegans Wake_. A character is imagining what joy it would be to smoke a pipe all alone surrounded by music. “I’d like own company best … Isn’t that lovely though? I give to me alone I trouble give!” Closer to Joyce’s intent is that character sees music “twined me abower”: with the packed-in meaning that he is like a tree surrounded by ivy/wrapt/wrappedbetween music. This is a way to see the pleasure in reading the _Wake_, and one key to the extraordinary expressivity of its incessant “simple” punning. The “Great C-Major Chord of Life”–a bit of a poem by someone–as noted (heh) by **Joanna** and rarely noticed by commentators, appropriately caps the passage, and is in miniature another instance of the _Wake’s_ unshakable structural theme of the unceasing joy of the world. The full passage is here: I’d like own company best, with the help of a norange and bear, to be reclined by the lasher on my logansome, my g. b. d. in my f. a. c. e., solfanelly in my shellyholders and lov‘d latakia the benuvolent, for my nosethrills with the jealosomines wilting away to their heart’s deelight. and the king of saptimber letting down his humely odours for my consternation, dapping my griffen, burning water in the spearlight, or catching trophies of the king‘s royal college of sturgeons by the armful for to bake pike and pie while,O twined me abower in L’Alouette’s Tower, all Adelaide’s naughtingerls, juckjucking benighth me, I’d tonic my twittynice Dorian blackbudds off my singasongapicoolo to pipe musicall airs on numberous fairyaciodes. I give, a king, to me, she does alone up there, yes see, I double give till the spinney all eclosed asong with them. Isn’t that lovely though? I give to me alone I trouble give! The second part of **Joanne** ’s response is also correct: it is the usual title of a musical setting of the mass _[Missa La so fa re mi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missa_La_sol_fa_re_mi)_, by Josquin de Prez. (Josquin’s fame in the 15th century was commensurate with Joyces now.) The syllables have also been glossed “Lascia fare me” (“Let me go” in Italian). > [@](#): > > How did we get on this starting from potatoes? From this path. Ain’t thread drift great? > [@pulykamell](#): > > It is. I assume the etymology is ultimately from Italian. > [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Yeah I’d say so. The only reason I know it, or any Polish, is the Polish supermarket across the road from my store is cheap. Sometimes though it’s a crapshoot what I’m actually buying. Fasola = beans too. Yay, I’m learning 🙂 > [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > So it’s do re mi beans ti do? ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/39 "2013-03-23T17:05:03Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > My partner has pointed out an incongruity, or at least a curiosity, in how these two foods got named in various languages when they got introduced to Europe. > > ```auto > > *English* Potato Tomato > *French* **Pomme de terre** Tomate > *Italian* Patata **Pomodoro** > *Spanish* Patata Tomate > > *Aztec* xitomatl > *Taino* batata (for sweet potato or US yam) > *Quechua* papa (for ordinary or irish potato) > > ``` > > The incongruity she sees is that French is the outlier in the world of Potato nomenclature, whereas Italian is in the Tomato field. English being essentially a Germanic language vs the other three being Latin-based, she’d expect English to be the oddity, if any. > > The Italian Pomodoro comes from\*\* Pom d’oro \*\*apple of gold, and the French Pomme de Terre means **apple of the earth**. Given the European proclivity for naming any new fruit as an apple of some type (pineapple, custard apple, love apple and so on) why did only Italian end up with that (apple-ate) origin for the tomato, and only French for the potato? > > We realise of course there may not necessarily be a good explanation for this, just a “well that’s how it happened to happen”. Anyway thanks for any thoughts. Apple-related nomenclature is not restricted to French and Italian, as the OP suggests. To be more exact, there’s a number of different languages with some variant of ‘earth-apple’ for **potato** , and there’s also a number of different languages that have apple-based words for \*\*orange \*\*(the fruit, not the color): sinaasappel (Dutch; from ‘Chinese Appel’); Apfelsine (German; similar etymology); pomeranč (Czech, ‘orange appel’, [from the French](http://cs.wiktionary.org/wiki/pomeran%C4%8D)). It does seem to be the case that words for \*\*tomato \*\*are either going to be some form of tomato, or some directly copied form of the italian ‘appel of gold’ (eg in the Russian and in the Polish). The Czech language is an exception here - my Czech dictionary does turn up ‘rajské jablíčko’ (paradisical little apple) but I’ve never heard that; rajče is more common. Still, there appears to be some sort of apple-root there that is not ‘apple of gold’. Some more data points: _Dutch_ Aardappel (Earth Apple); Tomaat As has been pointed out, in some cases, Germans also use Erdapfel instead of Kartoffel ([wiki](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartoffel)). In some Slavic languages: _Czech_ Brambora; Rajče _Russian_ Kartofel’; Pomidor Czech _brambora_ actually refers to the region of Brandenburg, in East Germany, from whence they apparently procured their potatoes. No link to apples there, though. I do seem to recall that in some Slavic language there are words for potato like ‘zemlyak’ or ‘zemak’, related to ‘zeme’, earth - but maybe I’m just making that up. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/40 "2013-03-23T17:11:16Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > …_Dutch_ Aardappel (Earth Apple); Tomaat… Wait, “Tomaat” –\> “Tomato”? Back in the crossing paths, but in one language. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528.md?page=3)