# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**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, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/41 "2013-03-23T17:16:46Z")
yeah - like the OP I’m listing words for potato (aardappel, etc.) and then for tomato (tomaat, etc.). Tomaat is the Dutch word for tomato. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/42 "2013-03-23T17:31:13Z")
BTW while the Spaniards who encountered the Taino “batata” first then perpetrated a false cognate by mashing(:p) it with the Quechua “papa” into “patata” in Castilian, and the Italian and English followed suit, most of the former Spanish domains seem to have kept the distinction in modern Spanish. In places where the native name of the Batata was already different – boniato, camote – they kept that in turn. It looks like the English got their referents for potato and tomato from the Spanish first-contacters while Northern and Central Continental Europe went through some intermediate steps ---
**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, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/43 "2013-03-23T17:40:14Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > yeah - like the OP I’m listing words for potato (aardappel, etc.) and then for tomato (tomaat, etc.). Tomaat is the Dutch word for tomato. Oh, OK. Got it. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/44 "2013-03-23T18:22:45Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > 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. I will also admit that I pick up food related words/nouns quite easily. I could probably ask for specific raw ingredients by name in japanese, hindi and medieval french, english and german [from working with a lot of period texts in my hobby of medieval cooking]. I suppose that would be good for managing to eat in Japan - I could at least ask after specific favorites. Though it does make rummaging for recipes for indian food easier if I can remember which legume I need to search for 😃 ---
**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 23, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/45 "2013-03-23T18:35:40Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Ah, if only kielbasa were kolbasz! Unbelievably, there are no more Hungarian butchers left in NYC. ☹ Really? Wow, I’m surprised. You can at least still find a variety of different kinds of _kolbasz_ in the Chicago suburbs, and Chicago isn’t known for having a particularly strong Hungarian population. I make my own fresh _kolbász_ when I have the time. Some Polish varieties of dried kiełbasa come close to some of the Hungarian dried sausages, the main difference being Hungarian sausages usually have a good bit of paprika in them and Polish sausages tend not to. Man, I feel like making some sausages now. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/46 "2013-03-23T20:12:33Z")
Possibly as a marketing ploy tomatoes were also called love apples in English, possibly relating to pomme d’amour in French. Does it strike anyone else as interesting that in the Netherlands, where the House of Orange rules, the fruit is called a chinese apple? ---
**Author:** ![Themenin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ee59a6/32.png) [@Themenin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Themenin)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/47 "2013-03-23T21:35:56Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > Yiddish is also _erdepel_, obviously cognate with Dutch _aardappel_, meaning the same thing as _pomme de terre_. > > I wondered if the “offel” in _Kartoffel_ could conceivably derive from _Apfel_, but I tend to doubt it. I note that this word also appears in Romance (Rumanian _cartof_) and Slavic (Russian _kartófel_) languages. There are a number of different Yiddish words for potato - at different times, different places etc. > **[A Truffle, and 10 Words for ‘Potato’](https://forward.com/culture/135803/a-truffle-and-10-words-for-potato/)** > > Irving Zlotnik writes: “There seem to be two commonly used words for the potato in Yiddish, kartofl and bulbe. I know the first comes from German Kartoffel, but where does bulbe come from?” Although different regions of Yiddish-speaking Eastern... “Although different regions of Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe had different words for potatoes — among them, according to Nahum Stutchkoff’s “Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language,” erdepl, yavkes, barabolye, mandebere, greln, zhemikes, gaydekes, and balabanes — bulbes and kartofl were indeed the two most common.” [“Bulbes”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmvGq0SZGL0) - Traditional song about potatoes. ---
**Author:** ![sidhechaos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sidhechaos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sidhechaos)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/48 "2013-03-26T08:01:47Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Of course, a fresh cut uncooked potato’s internal flesh looks very much like an apple’s - white. slightly watery and very firm. No surprise they would be called apples, even by the French. > > I recall reading something that tomatoes were part of the dealdy nightshade family of berries; so they were grown decoratively for a while (the tinier sizes) in Europe before people clued in that they could be eaten safely (or trusted the guy who’d tell them - “go ahead, eat it, it won’t kill you”. actually potatoes,tomatos, bell/mango peppers and eggplant are all nightshade foods. they are supposed to make arthritis worse according to my doc. I always wondered about the pomme du terre name myself since potatoes are so starchy I would have thought them to be like some form of natural bread ot a wierd underground rice crop. the thing I always wondered about was who was the first person crazy and desperate enough to eat a crab?:eek: ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/49 "2013-03-26T09:41:22Z")
> [@sidhechaos](#): > > the thing I always wondered about was who was the first person crazy and desperate enough to eat a crab?:eek: The kind of person who was already eating locusts and worms. Your bias is showing. ---
**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:** [July 9, 2013, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/50 "2013-07-09T01:11:14Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > 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. Yes! Just came across this thread [del]in a vanity search[/del] looking for something I posted a while ago, and I remembered that I learned recently that the Slovak for potato is, in fact, _zemiak_. BAM! ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2013, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528/51 "2013-07-09T04:49:42Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > The same seems to be true of other languages. For example, the fruit “orange” is called a “pomerantz” in Yiddish. To this armchair etymologist, that sure sounds a lot like “pomme orantz” – “orange apple”. Unlikely, because (in English, at least, and I think in French and Spanish too, and probably many other European languages) the word for the color orange derives from the word for the fruit, rather than vice-versa. It seems unlikely that Yiddish speakers are calling oranges “apples that are the color of oranges”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-potato-i-say-tomato/653528.md?page=2)