Friday, 1 February 2013

Knowing Your Onions


Just a link today to this article on all of the European words for onion, which I got from Etymonline's facebook page. Or, if you only want the map, here it is. Click to embiggen.




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6 comments:

  1. Gabi Soler i Siquès1 February 2013 at 13:54

    Here are two other etymological maps:
    Know your sheep: A sheep is a sheep is a sheep
    and something else:Honorable root, dishonorable word
    Both from The Third Chimpanzee (Jared Diamond)

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  2. Pattock2 February 2013 at 10:54

    I wonder why they missed out Greece, Albania (qepë) and Turkey (soğan).

    Kremmudi in Greek is obviously related to the Macedonian kromid they have and comes from the ancient Greek for small onion, krommudion. A big onion was krommuon. Interesting that many of the modern words from the Latin cepa are also from diminutives.

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  3. Pattock2 February 2013 at 11:31

    The English steal everybody's words, so I thought we must have some from cepa. Looks likely that leeks are like luks, as is the garleek. Chive is from cepa (or caepa). Chibol is an English name for the Welsh onion or a spring onion with the green stalk still on, as they are usually sold nowadays.

    I was mistaken in assuming that caepuila or caepulla were diminutives. Apparently they mean onion-bed.

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  4. laura freeman2 February 2013 at 12:18

    I'm just grateful for "embiggen"!

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  5. Brigid3 February 2013 at 14:30

    I wonder where the Welsh 'cennyn', meaning leek, comes from?

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  6. Asya Pereltsvaig7 September 2015 at 20:25

    Thanks for the repost! Here's the updated link (the GeoCurrents link no longer works): http://www.languagesoftheworld.info/etymology/geography-onion-vocabulary.html

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